Lovis Corinth (1858–1925) defies simple classification, and has been variously described as a member of the Berlin Secession group, a Post-Impressionist, and an Expressionist. All those have a certain amount of truth, but none really describes his works. Interestingly, he was a contemporary of George Clausen, who makes a fascinating comparison!

Born Franz Heinrich Louis in Prussia, he studied painting in Königsberg and Munich, and later travelled to Paris to study under Bouguereau and Robert-Fleury at the Académie Julian. He originally intended to be a history painter, but then concentrated on female nudes. Frustrated by his failure to gain acceptance at the Salon, he returned to Königsberg in 1888 and adopted the name Lovis Corinth.

He joined the Munich Secession in 1892 and engaged with the Berlin Secession, painting in a wide range of genres from landscape and portraits to history painting and religious works, each of which would merit an article of their own here. However, I will here focus on his narrative painting, in particular that of classical myths.

Ulysses Fighting the Beggar (1903) depicts a story from book 18 of Homer’s Odyssey. Odysseus/Ulysses has finally returned to his home city of Ithaca and is now determined to kill the many suitors to his wife Penelope. As he plans this, he is disguised as a beggar. This fragment of the complex story starts with the arrival of a beggar named Arnaeus or Irus, who misguidedly picks a fight with Odysseus, who promptly floors the beggar, stopping just short of killing him.

Corinth captures the fight as Odysseus (centre) is getting the better of Irus (left of centre), with various suitors and bystanders watching. Although painted loosely, each face has its own expression, ranging from amusement to apprehension, and there is abundant body language too.

The Childhood of Zeus (1905-6) shows Zeus, the senior of the Greek pantheon, as a young boy (centre). According to the various myths, he was the son of Cronus and Rhea. Cronus swallowed his other children, so to save Zeus from that fate, Rhea gave birth in Crete, and handed Cronus a rock disguised as a baby, which he promptly swallowed. Rhea then hid Zeus in a cave, where he was raised by one or more of a long list of surrogates, including Gaia, a goat, a nymph, and others. Corinth shows several of those possibilities, including a goat.

Homeric Laughter (1909) contains a complex assembly of mythical characters, invoked by a story contained within book 8 of Homer’s Odyssey. Odysseus is here being entertained by King Alcinous, after he met Nausicaä on the island of the Phaeacians. To cheer Odysseus up, the bard Demodocus tells a tale of the illicit love affair between Ares/Mars (god of war) and Aphrodite/Venus (god of love), which has been very extensively shown in paintings.

One day Hephaistos/Vulcan catches the couple making love in his marriage bed, and throws a very fine but unbreakable net over them. Hephaistos summons the other gods, who come and roar with laughter at the ensnared couple.

In this first version, Corinth shows Aphrodite recumbent on the bed, shielding her eyes from the crowd around her. Ares struggles with the net which secures the couple, looking frustrated. Hephaistos, clad in black with his tools slung around his waist, is talking to Poseidon (wearing a crown) with Dionysos/Bacchus behind him (clutching a champagne glass). At the right edge is Hermes/Mercury, with his winged helmet. Sundry putti are playing with Ares’ armour, and an arc of putti adorns the sky.

Corinth also made a second version, which he etched in 1920 to make prints.

In 1911 he suffered a stroke which left him with partial paralysis of his left side. This was initially devastating, as he had painted with his left hand. Over the following year, with the help of his wife, he learned to paint with his right hand, but never recovered the eloquence which he had before his stroke. One of his first substantial history paintings after that stroke was Ariadne on Naxos (1913), the focus of this article.

The story

Ariadne was the daughter of Minos, the King of Crete. Her father made her responsible for the labyrinth (created by Daedalus) which contained the Minotaur, and for its periodic sacrifices to the Minotaur. One year, Theseus, son of King Aegeus, volunteered to be a member of the sacrificial party, so that he could kill the Minotaur and put an end to the sacrifices.

When Ariadne met Theseus, she fell in love with him at first sight, and helped him in his mission by providing him with a sword, and a ball of thread which he could use to find his way back out of the labyrinth. Once Theseus had killed the Minotaur and found his way back out of the labyrinth, Ariadne eloped with him to the barren island of Naxos.

Once there, Theseus had tired of her, and abandoned her; she only had her attendant nymphs Naiad, Dryad, and Echo for company. In some versions of the myth, she then longed for death, and when Dionysus (Roman Bacchus) arrived, she married him, and bore him many children. She was later killed by Perseus at Argos.

Ariadne on Naxos (1913)

Corinth’s Ariadne on Naxos was inspired by Richard Strauss’s opera Ariadne auf Naxos (1912). Strauss revised this substantially in a second version of 1916. The original version is a 30 minute divertissement performed at the end of an adaptation by Hofmannsthal of Molière’s play Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme (in English, known as The Perfect Gentleman). This was first performed in Stuttgart in October 1912, and Corinth seems to have attended its Munich premiere on 30 January 1913.

Wikipedia’s masterly single-sentence summary reads: “Bringing together slapstick comedy and consummately beautiful music, the opera’s theme is the competition between high and low art for the public’s attention.”

Corinth’s painting shows a group of figures from classical myth on a symbolic, if not token, island.

At the left and in the foreground, Ariadne lies in erotic langour on Theseus’ left thigh. He wears an exuberant helmet, and appears to be shouting angrily and anxiously towards the other figures to the right.

The group in the middle and right is centred on Dionysus, who clutches his characteristic staff in his left hand, and with his right hand holds the reins to a leopard and a tiger, which are drawing his chariot. Leading those animals is a small boy, and to the left of the chariot is a young bacchante. Behind them is an older couple of rather worn-out bacchantes. Crossing the sky in an arc are many putti, their hands linked together.

Most remarkable here is the way in which Corinth has combined two separate events in this myth into a single image: Ariadne’s eventually broken relationship with Theseus, and her subsequently successful affair with Dionysus. This is, of course, a technique sometimes known as continuous narrative, and more typical of narrative paintings in the early Renaissance and before.

It has been stated that Corinth’s painting adopts a similar theme to Strauss’s opera, that of pretension in art, itself a development of the original story’s theme of faithfulness. A monoscenic approach to depicting the story in a painting, either showing Theseus abandoning Ariadne, or Dionysus discovering her (the most common treatment), is neither strong in a narrative sense, nor complete. By combining the two scenes in a single painting, Corinth gives as full an account as in other media.

Conclusions

Lovis Corinth painted many quite complex and sophisticated narrative works, of which this is a small selection of those drawn from classical myths. He used traditional narrative tools as laid down by Alberti, and in at least one painting composited two separate scenes from the same story into a single image – so-called continuous narrative, which had not been popular for over four hundred years. Although inspired by a contemporary opera, Corinth did not depict a single scene in the opera, but told the story in his own way.

By combining the two scenes in one painting, Corinth tells the whole story, although its cost is a more complex painting which some may find confusing.

I strongly recommend making comparison between the text narrative, Richard Strauss’s opera, and Corinth’s painting, as an exercise in the comparison of narrative techniques.

References

Wikipedia on Corinth.

Lemoine S et al. (2008) Lovis Corinth, Musée d’Orsay and RMN. ISBN 978 2 7118 5400 4.

Ariadne auf Naxos, opera by Richard Strauss – Wikipedia on the opera. I recommend the Salzburg Festival version of 2014, which is the first (1912) version and a fine production. It is available on iTunes.

When discussing Lovis Corinth’s Ariadne on Naxos, I glibly asserted that previous monoscenic approaches were neither strong in a narrative sense, nor complete. Given that the best-known of those is a Titian, this article surveys other paintings which show that same story.

The story

Ariadne, the daughter of Minos the King of Crete, helped Theseus, son of King Aegeus, to kill the Minotaur. She had fallen in love with him at first sight, and when he had found his way back out of the labyrinth, the couple eloped to the barren island of Naxos.

Once there, Theseus had tired of her, and abandoned her, leaving her with her attendant nymphs Naiad, Dryad, and Echo for company. She then longed for death, and when Dionysus (Roman Bacchus) arrived, she married him, and bore him many children.

Analysis

There are two distinct moments when Ariadne’s fortune changes: it swings from good to bad when she discovers that Theseus has abandoned her, and it swings back from bad to good when Dionysus turns up and marries her. Neither is particularly associated with the revelation of any new knowledge or information, but they both appear to be capable of making strong narrative in a painting.

The difficulty with depicting the story in a single painting is that it consists of two events which necessarily take place at separate times.

The painter can therefore opt to show Theseus departing, but then somehow needs to cue the forthcoming arrival of Dionysus, or they can opt to show Dionysus arriving, leaving the problem of cueing the previous departure of Theseus. Using a ship departing/arriving as either cue is an obvious solution, but is insufficiently explicit to make clear the resulting change in fortune.

It is therefore surprising that no major painter appears to have made a pair of paintings, the first showing Ariadne wishing for death as Theseus departs, and the second showing Ariadne’s joy at the arrival of Dionysus.

There is also more to the original story than the vicissitudes of human love and relationships. Theseus needed Ariadne to enable him to kill the Minotaur and escape from the labyrinth; once she had enabled that, he had no need for her, and could abandon her on Naxos. An alternative version of the myth claims that Athena told Theseus to leave Naxos; he went on to be King of Athens and a founder of the Greek civilisation. Dionysus, on the other hand, took pity on Ariadne in her grief, and married her to make her happy again.

These question our motives, faithfulness to others, and perhaps to our (artistic) principles. In addition to depicting the narrative, a masterly painting would surely tackle those issues too.

Ariadne alone

A few painters have attempted to tell this story in a painting containing just the figure of Ariadne.

Angelica Kauffman’s Ariadne Abandoned by Theseus (1774) shows the grief-stricken Ariadne, with Theseus’ ship sailing off into the half-light. Strong in facial expression and body language, there is no reference to Dionysus, leaving the story incomplete. Neither is there any deeper meaning apparent. That said, Ariadne’s robes are wonderfully painterly and diaphanous.

William Etty’s Ariadne (probably about 1820) shows the back and buttocks of an essentially naked Ariadne, her face hidden from the viewer. It is possible that there may once have been a ship sailing off to the right, but there is no longer any trace of that. Etty has taken care to paint a wonderfully detailed and spiky shell in the foreground, but its significance is as elusive as any narrative content. I am not sure why this has become known as Ariadne, or whether it was Etty’s intent to even link it to the story.

John William Waterhouse’s Ariadne (1898) is another puzzle. Ariadne, one breast peeking from her rich red robes, lies back in languor, apparently asleep, two leopards or cheetahs resting by her. In the distance, Theseus’ ship has just sailed. There is no sign of any grief on Ariadne’s part. Although leopards are associated with Dionysus, they cannot be heralds of his imminent arrival.

It is possible that Waterhouse has chosen to show us the moments before Ariadne wakes to discover Theseus has gone, and the red robes could tell us that they have consummated their relationship, but there is nothing to indicate her forthcoming grief, or later elation with Dionysus. As with Etty, Waterhouse appears not to have engaged with the story given in the myth, nor any deeper meaning.

Ariadne plus one

With one additional figure, it should be easier to tell the story more eloquently.

Guido Reni’s Bacchus and Ariadne (c 1619-20) is a wonderful painting in exceptional condition for its age. It shows Ariadne still looking glum-struck, looking up to the heavens, and away from Dionysus, who is looking at her intently. Both the figures are almost nude, and Ariadne is holding her right hand out towards Dionysus in a gesture whose meaning is not clear (to me, at least). There are several white sails on the horizon, but nothing to associate them with the story, or with Theseus. Beautiful though this painting is, its narrative appears obscure.

Eugène Delacroix’s Autumn – Bacchus and Ariadne (1856-63) is one of a group of four allegorical works which were commissioned by the industrialist Frederick Hartmann, hence known as Hartmann’s Four Seasons. For autumn, Delacroix has chosen to show Ariadne, looking full of woe and the inertia of depression, being pulled up by one arm, by Dionysus, identified by his thyrsus (staff) and chariot drawn by big cats. Above the couple is a putto bringing out a garland to tell us that love is in the making, and a large flagon is shown on the ground to the right, presumably from her previous union with Theseus.

There is a pile of what appears to be armour in the foreground, which may be a reference to Theseus, although it would seem implausible that he would have stolen away without his armour and sword. Sadly Delacroix died before these paintings were completed, so we can only speculate as to what he intended. However, he does seem to be getting far closer to depicting a complete story.

Crowds

If two figures are not sufficient, then the solution might be to go for more, at the risk of confusing the viewer.

One of the earliest paintings to show this story is this fresco Dionysus and Ariadne found in the ruins of Pompeii. Well over a millenium before Alberti framed his rules for narrative in paintings, its painter shows Ariadne, recumbent against a nymph’s shoulder and looking grief-stricken, being surprised by a whole party accompanying Dionysus.

A winged putto (pre-Christian) is drawing Ariadne’s robes from her, presumably telling Dionysus that she is his for the asking. Those with Dionysus are hard to identify, but presumably include at least one bacchante, and an elderly and drunken Silenius who is being helped up by an African.

This rather later mosaic Bacchus and Ariadne in Sabratha, Libya, places the happy couple in Dionysus’ chariot, being drawn by a pair of big cats, with a bacchante in tow. The fourth figure, at the right, is probably also one of Dionysus’ retinue, rather than a link to Theseus and his previous departure.

Titian’s Bacchus and Ariadne (1520-3) is probably the most famous painting of this myth, and another beautiful work. In the distance, at the left edge, Theseus’ ship is shown sailing away, with Ariadne apparently waving towards it, as Dionysus arrives and leaps out of his chariot. Above Ariadne in the sky is the Corona Borealis, or ‘northern crown’, a minor constellation associated with Ariadne. Behind her is a large drinking vessel on a screwed-up sheet, presumably the remains of the previous night’s celebrations with Theseus.

Dionysus comes with his whole party: his chariot is drawn by a pair of cheetahs, a drunken and bearded Silenius is swathed in serpents, and there are two bacchantes (maenads) and satyrs bearing the body parts of a deer.

This is one of the most complete accounts of the story, which only lacks clues to Ariadne’s grief in response to Theseus’ departure; her face is not sufficiently visible here for Titian to attempt to show any meaningful expression.

Annibale Carracci’s Triumph of Bacchus and Ariadne (1597-1602) is a marvellous fresco on a ceiling in the Palazzo Farnese in Rome. It shows a late phase of the happy union of Ariadne with Dionysus, complete with wedding festivities, but omits any reference to her previous grief, or even to Theseus.

The left side is centred on Ariadne, being crowned by a winged putto, and Dionysus, sat in his chariot complete with thyrsus (staff) and drawn by big cats. On the right side, the celebrations appear to be getting out of hand, and have been taken over by bacchantic revels. Figures in that group include the drunked and bearded Silenius, bacchantes with bared breasts, satyrs, and serving putti.

Sebastiano Ricci’s Bacchus and Ariadne (c 1713) gives a visible account of the discovery of a sleeping Ariadne by Dionysus, but contains subtle references to Theseus too.

Ariadne is still asleep, her left arm caressing the vacant area where Theseus must have been, and a large drinking vessel at the left edge of the painting. In the distance, just to the right of centre, is a man, presumably Theseus, about to steal away.

Dionysus, here with his classically ambivalent gender, has just arrived and stumbled across Ariadne. A bacchante and satyr point her out to him, and sundry putti and another bacchante make up the group. Dionysus holds his thyrsus (staff) in his left hand, and there is a big cat at his feet. As with Titian’s painting, the only element from the story which is lacking is any portrayal of Ariadne’s grief. Because Ricci has collapsed the two outer sections of the story in to overlap, there isn’t really any room for that.

Jean François de Troy’s Ariadne on Naxos (1725) shows Ariadne and Dionysus swooning with love for one another. Dionysus is shown in a leopard-skin, holding his thyrsus (staff) in his right hand. Plentiful putti are playing on chained bunches of grapes, and a satyr is trying to bring order in the left foreground.

The small window showing the background, on the left, is more revealing still. Look past a copulating bacchante-satyr couple, and other revellers, and there is Theseus’ ship sailing away from the island. Yet again there are no signs of Ariadne’s earlier grief.

Maurice Denis’ Bacchus and Ariadne (1907) is a radically modern treatment, which could be mistaken for a recreational beach scene at a Mediterranean resort. Buried in there, though, are some more traditional references.

Just to the right of centre, Dionysus stands behind Ariadne, helping to hold a red and white striped cloak or sheet on her left shoulder. Ariadne’s three attendant nymphs appear to be resting on the rocks at the left. Various bacchantes and other figures are riding black horses down in the water at the right, one of them clutching the thyrsus (staff). There is no sign of Silenius, a chariot, or big cats, and a yacht at the right edge may not have anything to do with the narrative.

Denis does not appear to include any cues to Ariadne’s earlier grief, nor to the events with Theseus.

I have already described Lovis Corinth’s Ariadne on Naxos (1913) and its composite scenic structure. By including Ariadne reclining on Theseus and the arrival of Dionysus with all his trappings, he gives a full account of the whole story in a single painting.

Conclusions

Each of the monoscenic treatments described above has lost some of the original narrative, which has been retained in Corinth’s composite approach.

In the case of Titian’s Bacchus and Ariadne (1520-3), and Ricci’s Bacchus and Ariadne (c 1713), the losses are small, and not too damaging to the narrative. The Titian is the easier to read, as some of Ricci’s cues are quite subtle, assuming of course that I have read them correctly.

It is much harder to gauge whether any of these paintings, even Corinth’s, go deeper and use the story to consider the concept of faithfulness. This is claimed as a reading of Corinth’s painting, but I am not sure whether anyone has seen it in Titian’s or Ricci’s. Perhaps reading such deeper meanings is inherently more difficult in painted narratives.

References

Wikipedia on Ariadne.

Ariadne auf Naxos, opera by Richard Strauss – Wikipedia on the opera.

European painted narratives have been dominated by stories from the classical Greek and Roman canons. Until the 1800s, very few narrative painters tackled myths from other cultures. One early specialist in Norse myths and history was Peter Nicolai Arbo (1831–1892).

Born in Drammen, Norway, he trained first in Copenhagen, then in the Düsseldorf Academy, before returning to Norway in 1861. From 1863 to 1871 he worked most of the time in Paris, but spent much of the remainder of his career in his native Norway. He was an accomplished and successful painter and illustrator (mainly for history books on Norway). His paintings are in many galleries throughout Norway and Sweden, with a particular concentration in his family home in Drammen, 25 miles south-east of Oslo.

Valkyries and Norse Myths

One of the best-known segments of Norse mythology is of the Valkyries, a group of female horse-riders, often portrayed as warriors, who decide which soldiers die in battle, and which survive. They then bear the bodies of the dead warriors on their horses to the hall of the slain, Valhalla.

Along with other stories from Norse sagas and epic poetry, they were modified to form the narrative in Wagner’s operatic sequence The Ring of the Nibelung; The Valkyries is the second of the four operas, and was first performed in 1870, the year in which the Franco-Prussian War started.

Ever since, the Valkyries have been unfortunately strongly associated with German nationalism, particularly in the years prior to the Second World War, which is a strange turn for Norse myths! In more recent years, the musical association has become even more strained, following the use of Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries in Francis Ford Coppola’s epic movie set in the Vietnam War, Apocalypse Now (1979).

Valkyrie (1864), now at the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm, is the earlier of Arbo’s two paintings of this subject. He painted it in Paris, but it was first shown in Stockholm in 1866.

Five years later, Arbo painted a second version, Valkyrie (1869), which has been retained in Norway’s Nasjonalgalleriet in Oslo. Both follow normal conventions in showing warrior-like women, with chain mail armour, shields, helmets, and spears. With them fly their accompanying ravens.

Åsgårdsreien (Åsgård’s Ride, The Wild Hunt) (1872) is drawn from a more general European folk myth, which is specifically including in the Norse canon, of a group of ghostly huntsmen passing in wild pursuit. Seeing the Wild Hunt was the harbinger of major catastrophe, usually a battle with many deaths. The riders could also snatch humans up and abduct them, perhaps to Valhalla, as Arbo shows in this powerful painting.

Dagr (1874) shows the Norse deity of the day (as opposed to night), the son of the god Dellingr, and the rider of the bright-maned horse Skinfaxi. Together they bring day and its light to mankind, much in the way that Apollo’s sun chariot crossed the sky for the civilisations of the Mediterranean. Arbo again shows a classical depiction drawn from the Norse myths, with Dagr’s right hand bearing a burning brand.

Nótt riding Hrímfaxi (1887) shows the dark side, the night. Nótt is given as the daughter of Nörvi; her third marriage was to Dellingr, the issue of which was Dagr. Interestingly, although Norse myth accounted for both day and night with gods, Greek myth had a much less prominent goddess of the night, Nyx (Roman Nox).

Hervör’s Death (1880) shows this shieldmaiden – who in many respects resembles a Valkyrie in her dress – dying in an inheritance conflict. She was leading an army against an assault of a much larger army of Huns. The conflict arose between her brothers, Hlöd and Angantýr, and it has been suggested that the men shown represent her foster father Ormar, and brother Angantýr. This appears to be a variation on the accounts of the Poetic Edda, where she is mourned by those men in Árheimar rather than on the battlefield as shown.

Norwegian History

Times Past (date not known) uses a very similar composition to that of Hervör’s Death to show the aftermath of another Norse battle.

Håkon the Good and the Farmers at the Sacrifice of Mære (1860) shows King Håkon Haraldsson (c 920–961) winning over landowners and promoting the conversion of the Norwegian people to Christianity. As the younger son of King Harald Fairhair, he was sent for safety to the court of King Athelstan in England, where he was converted to Christianity. On his father’s death, he returned to Norway with an expeditionary force, won the support of the landowners, and assumed the throne in 631. Mære was one of the most sacred pagan places in Norway, where sacrifices were made.

Saint Olaf’s Fall in the Battle of Stiklestad (c 1859) is a watercolor made for a print which appeared in the book Billeder af Norges Historie (Pictures of Norway’s History), published by Christian Tønsberg in 1860. This scene shows Tore Hund, at the right, killing King Olaf II of Norway with his spear, in the Battle of Stiklestad in 1030. The King was later canonised. Olaf’s younger half-brother, Harald Sigurdsson, survived the battle to succeed Olaf, only to die at the Battle of Stamford Bridge in 1066.

The Battle of Stamford Bridge (1870) shows a battle between Norwegian (‘Viking’) forces and an English army in Yorkshire, during the fateful year in which England was invaded by Normans. Although there were some smaller subsequent campaigns by Norse invaders, this is generally taken to mark the end of the ‘Viking Age’ in northern England.

The Norwegian force was led by King Harald Hardrada and the English king’s brother, Tostig Godwinson. The English force was led by the King of England, Harold Godwinson, who died less than three weeks later at the Battle of Hastings, and so yielded his throne to William, a Norman. On 25 September 1066, King Harald Hardrada was killed when he was hit in the neck by an arrow, as shown in the centre of Arbo’s atmospheric painting. Tostig Godwinson and most of the Norwegian army were also killed.

King Sverre’s Escape over Voss Mountains (1862) shows another Norwegian King’s struggle – this time against the weather and mountains – when trying to take control of the country. Sverre Sigurdsson (c 1145/51-1202) was proclaimed king in 1177, but then had the difficult task of enforcing his authority. With his supporting force of Birkebeiners, he moved south, was driven north, and then tried to move west to take Bergen by surprise.

However, when he reached Voss, in the mountains, he was ambushed by locals. His small force of Birkebeiners fought off the attack, but he had lost the element of surprise. He therefore moved east, into the Voss mountains, in harsh winter conditions, as shown here, before overwintering in Østerdal. His route is still known as Sverresgong. His rival to the throne, Magnus Erlingsson, fell at the Battle of Fimreite in 1184, leaving Sverre’s authority unchallenged.

Miscellany

Liden Gunvor and the Merman (1874-1880) is drawn from an opera The Fishers, by Johannes Ewald and Johann Hartmann, which was first performed in Copenhagen in 1780. Liden Gunver or Gunvor is taken to sea by an alluring but deceptive merman (the male counterpart of mermaid). Mermen were a common feature in Greek, Finnish, Irish, and Norse myths, but appear much less frequently in paintings than mermaids.

Arbo also painted in other genres. In case he appears to be hidebound to ‘Salon’ style, this very painterly, perhaps fully Impressionist, landscape of a View of Frognerslot from Skovveien (1890) shows how comfortable he was sketching his native country.

Conclusions

Other arts – literature and music in particular – are generally more international and cross-cultural in the narratives which they use. In many cases, readers and audiences prefer a wide range of stories and mythologies. Those which form the basis of narrative paintings have been drawn from a much narrower range of sources, notably Greek and Roman myths, the Bible, and some key events in European history.

The reasons for this narrowness in sources may derive from the need for the viewer to already be familiar with the story being portrayed; the classics and the Bible are among the few which have been common across much of Europe. It is a shame that few painters have seen the opportunity to broaden their story base, and that other mythologies are seen as local, and thus of little general appeal.

I will consider this further in a future article looking at depictions of the Finnish epic, the Kalevala.

References

Wikipedia, and in Norwegian.
Norwegian Biographic Dictionary (in Norwegian).

Edward Robert Hughes (1851-1914) was trained at the Royal Academy Schools in London from 1868, and became a popular portraitist. In addition, he was a studio assistant for more than fifteen years to the more senior Pre-Raphaelite William Holman Hunt (1827–1910), and a meticulous painter in watercolours.

The two major paintings which Hughes is known to have worked on with Holman Hunt are his late and life-sized version of The Light of the World, which I will not discuss here, and The Lady of Shalott (1905), shown above. The latter was a popular narrative among the Pre-Raphaelites and their followers, and this version is particularly rich in symbols. It also has cross-references to other narratives such as that of Arachne and her spider’s webs, and a full reading would take an article in itself.

Bertuccio’s Bride (1895) is one of Hughes’ earlier narrative paintings, which was derived from a series of illustrations which he painted for WG Waters’ translation of a sixteenth century collection of Italian short stories by the obscure Straparola, known as The Nights of Straparola. These stories are told in a similar manner to those of Bocaccio’s Decameron, although the Nights of Straparola has never achieved the same fame. Many are bawdy tales, and each concludes with a rude riddle.

The story of Bertuccio is fairly straightforward. He uses his inheritance to ransom the body of a man from his murderers, and to free a maiden from robbers. The maiden turns out to be a princess, who makes a contract of betrothal with him before she returns to her kingdom. Bertuccio then meets a mysterious knight, with whom he changes clothes, and goes in quest of his bride. When he is returning home with her, they meet the knight again, and Bertuccio offers to divide with the knight the wedding gifts, in return for the help which the knight provided. However, the knight turns out to be the spirit of the murdered man, whose body he ransomed, and declines the gifts.

Shown here is Bertuccio making the knight the offer to divide the wedding gifts. The princess, in full bridal gown, is seen at the far left, looking anxious. The two men are discussing the matter of the gifts, which are arranged on the ground between them, together with a huge and ornate sword.

Hughes has produced a very detailed painting, in which the two main protagonists lack facial expressions or body language to contribute to the narrative depicted. Other than its involvement of the supernatural, the original story has its peripeteia at the time that the mysterious knight reveals himself to be the spirit of the murdered man, which occurs at some time after the moment shown. Thus a good knowledge of the original narrative is needed in order to read the painting properly.

Diana’s Maidens (1898) shows what I presume is Diana running and clutching her clothes to her naked body, while two other nude women cavort in a distant lake.

Diana was unusual for being primarily a Roman goddess, although she became associated with the Greek goddess Artemis. Sworn never to marry, she was frequently associated with the water nymph Egeria, who was her servant, and Virbius, a woodland god. She is usually portrayed hunting in association with oak woodland, and is often accompanied by deer or hunting dogs. Her most famous associated myth – which is a popular subject for narrative paintings – is that of Actaeon, who saw her bathing naked. Diana metamorphosed him into a deer, and he was promptly attacked and killed by his own hunting dogs.

The scene shown by Hughes is probably associated with the myth of Actaeon, but if it is, then it shows an earlier moment, prior to his appearance, during the start of the story. Apart from Diana clutching her clothes to her body and fleeing, it is hard to determine the narrative shown here.

Hughes painted at least two works showing Valkyries. The first, Dream Idyll (A Valkyrie) (1902), is an erotic fantasy derived from the Norse mythology, showing a naked and unarmed woman riding a winged horse in the sky over a late Victorian city, such as London. Careful examination of the Valkyrie’s posture suggests that Hughes did not work from a real nude on a horse (or even the model of one). As shown, her seat would be extremely precarious, as her legs are not astride but in a side-saddle position, and the horse is unsaddled. I do not know why Hughes omitted the traditional armour and weapons here.

The Valkyrie’s Vigil (1906) seems further still from the traditional Norse myth or its Wagnerian interpretation. A tranquil barefoot woman, wearing a sheer exotic dress and clutching a sword and winged helmet, stares languidly into the distance. She is sat on a chain mail singlet, on the high stones of a castle, with a city far below. This is an ethereal and fairy Valkyrie, not a bearer of dead warriors to Valhalla.

Hughes is now probably best-known for a series of paintings which he made later in his career, showing similarly ethereal females in fantasy flights across the sky (and related scenes). Wings of the Morning (1905) was his presentation of the dawn, the coloured doves receding into what he termed “a mass of cirrus clouds”, rose-tinted by the dawn light.

As the winged nude woman is not intended to represent any mythical figure or even angel, it is a “supernatural” fantasy rather than a re-interpretation of an existing story. The woman is bringing the early day, with its coloured doves, songbirds of the dawn chorus, and clouds, to dispel the bats and owl of darkness below her. Exquisitely painted and spectacular, it is also a good example of the difficulties that narrative painting had gone through during the 1800s.

Although not a pendant to Wings of the Morning, and painted seven years later, Night with her Train of Stars (1912) shows its complementary scene, the arrival of night. Portrayed as another winged woman, this time she wears a blue gown and swaddles an infant, her right index finger at her lips as if to bring the silence of the night. Her blue clothing, crown, and infant are likely to be an allusion to the Virgin Mary.

In her tow is a train of putti-like winged infants, the nearest clutching at her gown. Stars twinkle between them, and there are poppy flowers (classically hypnotic), blackbirds, and other dark birds in flight.

Conclusions

Hughes’ watercolours are exquisite and spectacular fantasies, but their underlying narrative is quite shallow. His strongest story, Bertuccio’s Bride, is entirely in keeping, showing a scene before the peripeteia, which would be completely meaningless unless you were familiar with its obscure text. These are problems which are by no means peculiar to him, as I have shown in other paintings from the late 1800s.

Reference

Wikipedia.

Narrative painting is not, of course, peculiar to European art traditions. I have already looked at some works from the Indian sub-continent, and here look at one particularly striking example from Japan.

Western painting has generally avoided the use of paper as a support for permanent works, preferring wood panels and stretched canvas for mobile paintings. The popularisation of oil paint during the Renaissance has been a major consideration, as its paint layer requires a rigid support to minimise cracking and eventual loss. Canvas and wood have in turn imposed physical restrictions on the size and format of paintings, although those have been pushed to the their limits as a walk through some parts of the Louvre reveal.

East Asian painting has been far more welcoming of paper as a support, and the use of water-based paints which do not form a substantial or rigid film. This has encouraged the development of painted scrolls, which can reach amazing lengths.

Although most East Asian paintings are non-narrative – typically being seasonal landscapes composed according to elaborate aesthetic conventions – there have been periods in their very long history when some narrative works have been prominent. Perhaps the most notable of these is the Golden Age of the handscroll or emaki, the Kamakura period in Japan (1185-1333).

This was a particularly interesting period in Japanese history, as it saw the emergence of the samurai as a caste, the rise of Buddhism, and government was based in Kamakura, on the coast to the south of modern Tokyo. Kamakura is a fascinating and beautiful place, and I strongly recommend you to visit it, if you ever get a chance to go to Tokyo.

Narrative strategies for emaki

Long scrolls are an ideal format for broad and breathtaking panoramic landscapes, and East Asian painting has developed them for that genre above all.

They are a bit more tricky when used to depict narrative. The obvious approach then is to paint several scenes or chapters from a narrative on each scroll, and that proved the most popular. This enables the artist to tell quite complex stories over a series of images, much as some Europeans have over multiple canvases. These have sometimes been constrained by the prevailing conventions – such as refraining from showing facial expressions – but in general offer similar opportunities for narrative.

An alternative approach is to use the width of the scroll to depict both space and time, and it is this which I will focus on here. This will only work with certain narratives, which progress in space and time together: it would be futile, for example, for depicting a series of scenes which took place in the same location.

This is, in essence, the toughest perspective projection possible. The artist has to reduce the four dimensions of space and time to 3D, and then depict those on the 2D scroll. Interestingly, this was being done at a time when Japanese artists were using a form of multi-point linear perspective projection, in which sections of each scroll would share the same vanishing points, but there would be multiple sets of vanishing points along the length of the scroll. The approach to time was similar: what is shown within each area along the length of the scroll would be roughly simultaneous, but as you move along the length of the scroll, so time progresses more rapidly.

Night Attack on the Sanjō Palace – Heiji Monogatari Emaki (Sanjo Scroll) (平治物語絵巻 (三条殿焼討))

This handscroll is 7 metres long, but only 41 cm deep, and shows events which occurred in the Heiji Rebellion in January 1160. As with all Japanese handscrolls, it is read from right to left (bearing out my contention that reading follows the same sense as writing), with the most recent events shown at the left. Scrolls were rolled and mounted to facilitate that.

Fujiwara no Nobuyori and Minamoto no Yoshitomo wanted to achieve changes in government, and seized the opportunity when Taira no Kiyomori, the military leader of Japan at the time, left the capital Kyoto on a family pilgrimage. They assembled their force of about five hundred, and attacked the Emperor’s Palace: it is this which is shown in the scroll. [Click on each image to open in your browser, and then click on that image to enlarge.]

At the far right of the scroll is introductory text, followed by the scene of a few people hurrying to the left. This moves into a confused mass of the rebel force, various nobles, and ox carts.

Within this mass, the same ox carts and people are shown two or more times, some running pedestrians over.

Reaching the left edge of that mass, there is a group of rebels outside the palace grounds. Further to left, the rebels have now entered the grounds, then enter the buildings. There Fujiwara no Nobuyori orders the retired Emperor into an ox cart. The palace buildings are set alight, and their occupants try to flee the fierce flames and billowing smoke. As the flames die out, the rebels leave the palace grounds. Far to the left the retired Emperor is seen in his ox cart, surrounded by rebels. As they take him away, at the front of the column is Fujiwara no Nobuyori, the rebel leader.

There is then a final section of concluding text before reaching the left end of the scroll.

Conclusions

In effect, this serial narrative is similar to that used during the Renaissance in Europe, but is formally structured along the length of the scroll. In this particular case, compounding changing time and location worked, but in many narratives conflicts would arise and make the technique inappropriate. This explains why there are few examples like the Sanjo Scroll, and many more which show a time series of separate events along the length of the scroll.

I would love to see an explanation as to how different cultures came to have different directions for their writing systems, which do seem to determine the direction in which you read very wide paintings like these magnificent scrolls.

References

Feature on the scroll with a scrolling viewer (requires Flash!).
Emaki on Wikipedia (French).
Wikipedia (English).

Most – perhaps all – societies have their own mythologies which shape their culture and collective identity. Oddly, until recently most European narrative painting has depicted myths from ancient Hebrew, classical Greek, or Roman societies, rather than those to which the artist belongs, as if their own cultural heritage was somehow inferior to those ‘classical’ cultures. The one stark exception to this is in Finland.

Although there have long been societies and cultures in what is now Finland, from 1216 to 1917 the area was ruled first by Sweden and then by Russia. The rise in interest in Finnish folklore and culture during the nineteenth century was an important part of the development of the Finnish nation.

In the early part of the nineteenth century, several scholars started to make formal collections of the runes or songs of Finnish folklore. Among them was a polymath named Elias Lönnrot (1802-84), who made long trips into the countryside of Karelia, the east of Finland which now runs into Russia, from 1828 onwards. Realising that these could fit into a substantial epic poem, he gradually built the fragments into a greater whole. In 1835, he published his first attempt to assemble them into the Kalevala, that version now being known as the old Kalevala.

His research continued, and in 1849 he published a second version which has become accepted as the definitive epic, the Kalevala that is today the Finnish national mythology. It has since inspired almost every Finnish creative, including most famously Jean Sibelius, and the painters whose works I show below, and in the next article about the greatest of the painters of the Kalevala, Akseli Gallen-Kallela.

The Kalevala is long, consisting of fifty separate songs and 22,795 verses, and its narrative is protracted and very complex. At the end of this article I have reprinted an English summary from WF Kirby’s translation of the whole Kalevala.

Ekman’s Ilmatar (1860) shows the daughter of the sky, herself the virgin spirit of the air, who is impregnated by the sea and wind, then models the earth, and gives birth to Väinämöinen, who swims to the shore. This is the start of the creation myth detailed in Song 1 of the epic.

Keinänen’s Väinämöinen and Aino (1896) shows a scene from Song 4. Väinämöinen, the central figure and hero of the epic, first meets the young girl Aino in the forest, and asks her to be his wife, shown here. She runs home upset, angry, and in tears, and tells her mother. Her mother tells her to stop crying, and to be joyful. Aino, distressed by the prospect of marrying an old man, wanders off, arrives at the shore of a strange lake, and drowns when trying to wash in the lake.

Godenhjelm’s Ilmarinen Forges the Sampo (c 1860) shows one of the most popular scenes, from Song 10. Väinämöinen returns home, and urges Ilmarinen to go to court the Maiden of Pohjola, who can be won by forging a Sampo (a mysterious talisman whose nature is open to speculation). When Ilmarinen refuses, Väinämöinen uses magic to transport him to Pohjola in a whirlwind. Once there, Ilmarinen forges the Sampo (shown here), but the Maiden declines his offer of marriage, so he returns home disconsolate.

Ekman’s Lemminkäinen’s Mother Gathering her Son’s Body from Tuonela’s River (1862) is drawn from Songs 14-15. Lemminkäinen is assigned three tasks in order to win the hand of the Maiden of Pohjola in marriage. He completes the first two, but the third takes him to the River of Tuonela, where he is killed, his body dismembered, and cast into the river’s rapids. His mother finds out that he is dead, so she takes a rake to the rapids, where she recovers her son’s body parts (shown here), joins them together, and uses charms and ointments to resuscitate him.

Keinänen’s Kullervo with His Herds (1896) shows narrative from Songs 31-33. Untamo lays waste the territory of his brother, leaving just one surviving woman, who is pregnant. She gives birth to a son, Kullervo, who – while still in his cradle – vows vengeance on Untamo. Kullervo is abused as a child, and brought up as a slave. As he grows up, he spoils everything that he touches. He is sold as a slave to Ilmarinen, who sets him to work herding cattle. Ilmarinen bakes a stone into the bread for his lunch, and when Kullervo tries to cut the bread, he ruins his knife (shown here), which is his only memento of his family.

The remaining two paintings show the same scene from Songs 40-41. When Väinämöinen is on his way with Ilmarinen to Pohjola to get the Sampo, they catch a huge pike, kill and eat it. Väinämöinen makes a kantele (Finnish harp) from its jaws, but no one else knows how to play it. Väinämöinen plays it so beautifully that all creatures make their way to listen to him playing, and all weep with emotion. Väinämöinen’s own tears fall into the water, where they become blue pearls.

Ekman’s Väinämöinen Playing (1857-66) shows Väinämöinen playing his kantele, with a bird perched on it, and people congregating in the water, on shore, and on a rainbow even, to listen to him playing.

Elias Muukka’s Väinämöinen Triptych (1914) is more barren, and appears to have been set before any birds, beasts, and other humans have arrived.

The second and final article in the series will consider Akseli Gallen-Kallela’s paintings of the Kalevala.

References

Wikipedia on the Kalevala.

The text, translated into English by WF Kirby from Project Gutenberg (free).
Audiobook in English translation (WF Kirby) from LibriVox (free).
List of translations, with links, on Wikipedia.

Mäkinen K, tr Brooks K, illustrations by Pirkko-Liisa Surojegin (2009) The Kalevala, Tales of Magic and Adventure, Simply Read Books. ISBN 978 1 897476 00 0. A very accessible and beautifully illustrated retelling in prose.
Pentikäinen JY, tr Poom R (1999) Kalevala Mythology, expanded edn, Indiana UP. ISBN 978 0 253 21352 5.

The world’s best collection of paintings of the Kalevala is in the Ateneum in Helsinki, which also contains many other fine works by Finnish artists. It is a day well spent in a lovely city, although you will probably prefer to visit in the summer, as Helsinki can get quite bitter in winter.

WF Kirby’s Summary of The Kalevala
(copied from the Gutenberg Library version of the Everyman Library edition of 1907.)

Song 1. After a preamble by the bard, he proceeds to relate how the Virgin of the Air descended into the sea, was tossed about by the winds and waves, modelled the earth, and brought forth the culture-hero Väinämöinen, who swims to shore.

2. Väinämöinen clears and plants the country, and sows barley.

3. The Laplander Joukahainen presumes to contend with Väinämöinen in singing, but is plunged by him into a swamp, till he pledges to him his sister Aino; after which he is released, and returns home discomfited. But Aino is much distressed at the idea of being obliged to marry an old man.

4. Väinämöinen makes love to Aino in the forest; but she returns home in grief and anger, and finally wanders away again, and is drowned while trying to swim out to some water-nymphs in a lake. Her mother weeps for her incessantly.

5. Väinämöinen fishes up Aino in the form of a salmon; but she escapes him, and his mother advises him to seek a bride in Pohjola, the North Country, sometimes identified with Lapland, but apparently still further north.

6. While Väinämöinen is riding over the water on his magic steed, Joukahainen shoots the horse under him. Väinämöinen falls into the water, and is driven onwards by a tempest, while Joukahainen returns to his mother, who upbraids him for shooting at the minstrel.

7. Väinämöinen is carried by an eagle to the neighbourhood of the Castle of Pohjola, where the chatelaine, Louhi, receives him hospitably, and offers him her beautiful daughter if he will forge for her the talisman called the Sampo. He replies that he cannot do so himself, but will send his brother Ilmarinen, so Louhi gives him a sledge in which to return home.

8. Väinämöinen, on his journey, finds the daughter of Louhi sitting on a rainbow weaving, and makes love to her. In trying to accomplish the tasks she sets him, he wounds himself severely, and drives away till he finds an old man who promises to stanch the blood.

9. The old man heals Väinämöinen by relating the origin of Iron, and by salving his wounds.

10. Väinämöinen returns home, and as Ilmarinen declines to go to Pohjola to forge the Sampo, he causes a whirlwind to carry him to the castle. Ilmarinen forges the Sampo, but the maiden declines to marry him at present, and he returns home disconsolate.

11-15. These Runos relate the early adventures of Lemminkainen. He carries off and marries the beautiful Kyllikki, but quarrels with her, and starts off to Pohjola to woo the daughter of Louhi. Louhi sets him various tasks, and at length he is slain, cast into the river of Tuoni, the death-god, and is hewed to pieces; but is rescued and resuscitated by his mother.

16-17. Väinämöinen regrets having renounced the daughter of Louhi in favour of Ilmarinen, and begins to build a boat, but cannot complete it without three magic words, which he seeks for in vain in Tuonela, the death-kingdom, but afterwards jumps down the throat of the dead giant, Antero Vipunen, and compels him to sing to him all his wisdom.

18-19. Väinämöinen and Ilmarinen travel to Pohjola, one by water and the other by land, and agree that the maiden shall make her choice between them. She prefers Ilmarinen, who is aided by his bride to perform all the tasks set him by Louhi.

20-25. The wedding is celebrated at Pohjola, an immense ox being slaughtered for the feast; after which ale is brewed by Osmotar, “Kaleva’s most beauteous daughter.” Every one is invited, except Lemminkainen, who is passed over as too quarrelsome and ill-mannered. Before the bride and bridegroom leave, they have to listen to long lectures about their future conduct.

26-30. Lemminkainen is enraged at not being invited to the wedding, forces his way into the Castle of Pohjola through the magical obstacles in his path, and slays the lord of the castle in a duel. He flies home, and his mother sends him to hide in a distant island where all the warriors are absent, and where he lives with the women till the return of the men, when he is again obliged to fly. He returns home, and finds the whole country laid waste, and only his mother in hiding. Against her advice, he persuades his old comrade Tiera to join him in another expedition against Pohjola, but Louhi sends the Frost against them, and they are driven back in great distress.

31-36. A chief named Untamo lays waste the territory of his brother Kalervo, and carries off his wife. She gives birth to Kullervo, who vows vengeance against Untamo in his cradle. Untamo brings Kullervo up as a slave, but as he spoils everything he touches, sells him to Ilmarinen. Ilmarinen’s wife ill-treats him, and he revenges himself by giving her over to be devoured by wolves and bears, and escapes to the forests, where he rejoins his family. One of his sisters has been lost, and meeting her accidentally and without knowing her, he carries her off. She throws herself into a torrent, and he returns home. His mother advises him to go into hiding, but first he makes war on Untamo, destroys him and his clan, and again returns home. Here he finds all his people dead, and everything desolate; so he wanders off into the forest, and falls on his own sword.

37-49. Ilmarinen forges himself a new wife of gold and silver, but cannot give her life or warmth, so he carries off another daughter of Louhi; but she angers him so much that he changes her into a seagull. Ilmarinen and Väinämöinen, who are afterwards joined by Lemminkainen, now undertake another expedition to Pohjola to carry off the Sampo. On the way, Väinämöinen constructs a kantele or harp of pikebone, and lulls Louhi and her people to sleep; but she pursues the robbers, and first the kantele is lost overboard, and then the Sampo is broken to pieces and lost in the sea. Väinämöinen saves enough to secure the prosperity of Kalevala, but Louhi only carries home a small and almost useless fragment. Väinämöinen then makes a new kantele of birchwood. Louhi brings pestilence on Kalevala, then sends a bear against the country, and lastly, steals away the sun and moon, hiding them in the stone mountain of Pohjola. Väinämöinen drives away the plagues, kills the bear, and renews fire from a conflagration caused by a spark sent down from heaven by the god Ukko. Ilmarinen then prepares chains for Louhi, and terrifies her into restoring the sun and moon to their original places.

50. The virgin Marjatta swallows a cranberry, and brings forth a son, who is proclaimed King of Karelia. Väinämöinen in great anger quits the country in his boat, but leaves the kantele and his songs behind him for the pleasure of the people.

The above excerpt is subject to the standard Gutenberg Library licence.

My previous article looked at several of the early responses in paintings to the publication of the Finnish national epic, the Kalevala. This concentrates on the single most prolific painter of the Kalevala, Akseli Gallen-Kallela (1865–1931).

I have already covered his career in more general terms in an earlier article. He was born Axél Waldemar Gallén, and from the 1880s was actively researching the Kalevala. He Finnicised his name in 1907.

The grandest mobile painting of his career, Gallen-Kallela’s Aino Myth (1891) is a triptych set in a gilt frame with quoted text from the Kalevala inset, showing scenes from Songs 4-5.

The left panel shows the first meeting between Väinämöinen, the central figure and hero of the epic, and the young Aino, Joukahainen’s sister, in the forest. The perpetually ancient Väinämöinen there asks Aino to be his wife, to her shock and anger. The girl runs back to her mother in tears, and tells her. Her mother offers no sympathy, but tells her to stop crying, and to rejoice at the offer.

Aino remains distressed at the prospect of marrying such an old man, so wonders off, and becomes lost in the forest. She comes across the shore of a strange lake, where she sees the maids of Vellamo playing in the water, as shown in the right panel. She enters the water to wash, and drowns.

In Song 5, Väinämöinen goes to fish for Aino in the lake, and catches a salmon, which he tries unsuccessfully to cut up, so the fish slips back into the water. It then changes into Aino, who mocks Väinämöinen that he may have held her in his hands, but he cannot keep her, shown in the centre panel. She then disappears. Väinämöinen then travels to Pohjola to court the Maiden there.

A copy of the triptych is also in the Musée d’Orsay in Paris.

Joukahainen’s Revenge (1897) shows the consequences of the death of Aino, from Song 6. Aino’s brother, Joukahainen, understandably bears a grudge against Väinämöinen, and waits for him to make the return journey from Pohjola. Joukahainen eventually catches sight of his quarry riding across a frozen lake, as shown here, and shoots at him with his crossbow, but strikes the horse. Väinämöinen falls into the water, where the wind catches him and carries him out to sea. Joukahainen rejoices, as he thinks that he has seen the last of his enemy, but Väinämöinen is rescued by an eagle which takes him back to Pohjola.

Forging of the Sampo (1893) is Gallen-Kallela’s first depiction of this central event in the Kalevala, described in Song 10. Väinämöinen returns home, and urges Ilmarinen to go to court the Maiden of Pohjola, who can be won by forging a Sampo – a mysterious talisman whose nature remains undefined. When Ilmarinen refuses, Väinämöinen uses magic to transport him to Pohjola in a whirlwind. Once there, Ilmarinen forges the Sampo, but the Maiden of Pohjola declines his offer of marriage, leaving him to return home disconsolate.

The next three paintings appear to be concerned with the death and recovery of Lemminkäinen in the River of Tuonela, described in Songs 14-15.

By the River of Tuonela (1903) was a study completed in preparation for Gallen-Kallela’s frescoes in the Jusélius Mausoleum in Pori, a lavish memorial to the daughter of an affluent businessman, the girl having died at the age of eleven; in 1895, Gallen-Kallela’s own daughter Marjetta had died when even younger. It is the only such mausoleum in Finland.

In Song 13, Lemminkäinen is assigned three tasks in order to win the hand of the Maiden of Pohjola in marriage. He completes the first two, hunting down the Hiisi elk on ski, and bridling the fiery-mouthed Hiisi gelding in Song 14. The third and final task is to shoot a swan on the River of Tuonela, in the underworld. This study appears to show Lemminkäinen boarding a canoe to attempt that task (as far as I can discover). Sadly the frescoes themselves underwent rapid deterioration, and were finally destroyed in a fire in 1931, but were repainted by Gallen-Kallela’s son, Jorma.

Lemminkäinen Came to the River (1920) takes the story one step further, with Lemminkäinen on the bank of the River of Tuonela, in the underworld, confronted by a fearsome white eagle which guards the bodies of the dead below.

He is then killed by a malicious cowherd, who had taken offence at Lemminkäinen earlier. His body is cast into the River of Tuonela, where is it dismembered when in the rapids.

Lemminkäinen’s Mother (1897) sees portents of her son’s death, obtains information about it, and takes a rake to the rapids. There she recovers her son’s body parts, joins them back together, and uses charms and ointments to resuscitate him (shown here). In the background is the swan which her son was trying to kill, and she is surrounded by the charms and devices which she has been using to bring him back to life. She succeeds.

In Songs 31-36, Untamo lays waste the territory of his brother Kalervo, leaving just one surviving woman, who is pregnant. She gives birth to a son, Kullervo, who – while still in his cradle – vows vengeance on Untamo.

Kullervo is abused as a child, and brought up as a slave. As he grows up, he spoils everything that he touches. He is sold as a slave to Ilmarinen, who sets him to work herding cattle. Ilmarinen bakes a stone into the bread for his lunch, and when Kullervo tries to cut the bread, he ruins his knife, the only memento of his family. He stands cursing in anger, shown in Kullervo Cursing (1899).

The next two paintings, and the last of Gallen-Kallela’s movable works which I show here, concern the later history of the Sampo, the talisman which was forged by Ilmarinen before, and kept in Pohjola. In Song 39, Väinämöinen and Ilmarinen set off on an expedition to recover the Sampo, arriving at Pohjola in Song 42.

Väinämöinen plays his kantele (Finnish harp) and lulls the forces of Pohjola to sleep. In The Abduction of Sampo (1905) they are shown removing the Sampo from the stone mountain, to take it down to their boat.

With the Sampo stowed in their boat, Väinämöinen, Ilmarinen, and their crew from Kalevala set off to return home. The Mistress of Pohjola wakes up and realises what has happened. She sends the boat thick fog, a great wind, and more, to try to stop the removal of the Sampo. In The Defence of the Sampo (1896), Gallen-Kallela shows a scene from Songs 42-43, with the forces of Pohjola led by the Mistress at the upper right. Väinämöinen, still holding the tiller in his left hand, is shown with his long white beard and hair, brandishing a sword at her, and the crew fend her off with spears and boathooks.

At the bottom left, Väinämöinen’s kantele made from the jaw of a huge pike has been lost overboard.

This painting was commissioned by a rich decorative painter and trader, but after his wife had an “enormous nervous fit” when she saw it, the commission was amicably cancelled. When it went on public display it received high praise, and was considered the best painting that the artist had produced to date.

The most extensive paintings that Gallen-Kallela made of the Kalevala were his frescoes, originally for the Finnish Pavilion at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1900, but painted again in 1928 in the lobby of the National Museum of Finland, in Helsinki. They are extraordinary works and well worth seeing if you ever get to Helsinki.

The Forging of Sampo (1928) shows a different account of the events in Song 10 (see above).

Ilmarinen Ploughs the Snake Field (1928) shows Song 19, the first of three tasks required of Ilmarinen before he can have the hand of the Maiden of Pohjola in marriage. He has to plough a field which is full of snakes (vipers), which are shown attacking the horse and Ilmarinen, who is suitably protected by armour.

The Great Pike (1928) shows a story from the journey of Väinämöinen and Ilmarinen to Pohjola to get the Sampo, from Songs 40-41. They catch a huge pike, kill, cook, and eat it. Väinämöinen later makes a kantele (Finnish harp) from its jaws, which he plays so beautifully that all creatures make their way to listen to him playing.

The Defence of Sampo (1928) shows the same scene from Songs 42-43 which the artist had previously depicted in his The Defence of the Sampo (1896) above.

Conclusions

The compilation of the Kalevala opened up a unique opportunity for artists to depict the newly published but very ancient stories of Finnish culture. Those who responded did not disappoint, either in the quantity or quality of their narrative works. Neither did they see any need to embellish, embroider or otherwise tamper with the original narrative.

It is a pity that other, older nations have not had similar opportunities which might have led to a richer range of myths being painted and so brought back into other cultures.

As a result, Finnish painters do not appear to have undergone the same difficulties that narrative painting underwent in the rest of Europe during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This suggests that one of the major factors in those difficulties was the source of narrative subjects for painting: in the rest of Europe, classical stories had become hackneyed and were no longer seen as being integral to contemporary culture, but there did not appear to be other stories to replace them.

References

Wikipedia on the Kalevala, and on Gallen-Kallela.

The text, translated into English by WF Kirby from Project Gutenberg (free).
Audiobook in English translation (WF Kirby) from LibriVox (free).
List of translations, with links, on Wikipedia.

Mäkinen K, tr Brooks K, illustrations by Pirkko-Liisa Surojegin (2009) The Kalevala, Tales of Magic and Adventure, Simply Read Books. ISBN 978 1 897476 00 0. A very accessible and beautifully illustrated retelling in prose.
Pentikäinen JY, tr Poom R (1999) Kalevala Mythology, expanded edn, Indiana UP. ISBN 978 0 253 21352 5.

The world’s best collection of paintings of the Kalevala is in the Ateneum in Helsinki, which also contains many other fine works by Finnish artists. It is a day well spent in a lovely city, although you will probably prefer to visit in the summer, as Helsinki can get quite bitter in winter. The National Museum of Finland, with its frescoes by Gallen-Kallela, is within walking distance of the Ateneum and well worth visiting too.

Charles Dickens (1812-70) was one of the most successful writers in history, and a true child of the nineteenth century. With increasing literacy and the progressive introduction of compulsory education throughout much of Europe, he and others such as Mark Twain, Edgar Allan Poe, Arthur Conan Doyle, Victor Hugo, Tolstoy, Flaubert, Balzac, and Dostoevsky, were hugely popular story-tellers of the day. Many of their popular works were published very successfully in illustrated editions, yet hardly any of their narratives are told in paintings.

This article examines what happened to those popular stories of the nineteenth century. Unlike previous articles in this series, it tells its story by the remarkable lack of paintings.

A succession of pure illustrators and established artists produced illustrations for Dickens’ books and the others which sold so well during the nineteenth century. Among the most prolific illustrators of Dickens were Hablot Knight Browne – better known as Phiz – George Cruikshank, John Gilbert, and Augustus Leopold Egg. Although George Cruikshank‘s (1792–1878) paintings are less well-known, he did paint narrative works, such as that showing Herne’s Oak from Shakespeare’s 1602 comedy, The Merry Wives of Windsor.

I can find no painting by Cruikshank depicting any characters or scene from any of Dickens’ novels, despite his intimate familiarity with them.

Three other artists who illustrated Dickens did, though, produce paintings of relevance. Joseph Clayton Clarke (better known as Kyd) (1857-1937) painted many portraits of Dickens’ characters, such as the splendid rendering of Mr Bumble from Oliver Twist, shown below. But he did not go so far as to produce any narrative paintings, as far as I can discover.

Charles Edmund Brock‘s (1870-1938) watercolour of Oliver Twist is also closer, but turns out to be one of many such paintings which he produced as illustrations for Dickens’ books.

Where painters have been responsible for creating book illustrations, as in the case of Sir Luke Fildes (1843–1927), their illustrative work and paintings appear to overlap very little indeed. Although Fildes was commissioned to produce illustrations for Dickens’ last book, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, his own paintings on related subjects did not draw on Dickens’ stories.

Fildes’ early Applicants for Admission to a Casual Ward (1874) was even exhibited at the Royal Academy with Dickens’ description of a scene outside a workhouse in 1855:
Dumb, wet, silent horrors! Sphinxes set up against that dead wall, and none likely to be at the pains of solving them until the general overthrow.

Fildes’ later The Doctor (1891) was commissioned by Sir Henry Tate, but the story tells of Fildes’ own personal tragedy when his infant son died in 1877. He even built a replica of a fisherman’s cottage in a corner of his studio to give the background greater authenticity of his own fictitious narrative which the painting shows.

The only artist in the nineteenth century who seems to have painted any significant number of narrative works drawn from contemporary popular stories is Robert Braithwaite Martineau (1826-1869). The Tate Gallery has two such paintings of his: Kit’s Writing Lesson (1852), above, showing a less than memorable scene from Dickens’ The Old Curiosity Shop, and Picciola (1853), based on the 1836 novel of the same name by the obscure French novellist Xavier Boniface Saintine (1798-1865).

Narrative paintings were still very popular in the works of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, and their followers. But as I have detailed in other articles, their preference for narrative sources was very selective when it came to the contemporary. You will not find any Dickens among the core members of the Brotherhood, nor the likes of JW Waterhouse. He is also omitted from later problem pictures even in indirect reference.

Where these prominent artists did refer to contemporary writing, they preferred the likes of Alfred Lord Tennyson’s (1809–1892) poem The Lady of Shalott, which recounts part of the Arthurian legends as retold in an Italian novella from the 1200s.

Even when they constructed narrative series of paintings, Dickens does not seem to have been appropriate as their basis.

Prolific illustrators who also painted, such as Gustave Doré and Walter Crane, seldom chose to paint contemporary narrative. When the few Impressionists painted narrative works, even Cézanne who was from childhood a close friend of Émile Zola, did not depict any contemporary stories.

Extensive references on narrative themes in paintings, such as Roberts (1998, 2014), confirm that hardly any significant paintings use themes from the great nineteenth century novels. The most obvious exception to this was in Finland, where the ‘new’ Kalevala was published in 1849, and quickly became the dominant theme in painting.

The reason, I think, was the general belief that, great though they were, these popular novels and other prose works were not appropriate subjects for fine art. Classics and poetry, perhaps, but a painting based on a mass-market and often serialised novel could not be fine art.

Yet the many religious paintings of the Renaissance which went into places of worship were surely just as populist. Perhaps even the Impressionists saw themselves as catering for a market dominated by rich patrons and purchasers, rather than those who avidly read Dickens or Zola.

Reference

Roberts HE (1998, 2014) Encyclopedia of Comparative Iconography, Themes Depicted in Works of Art, 2 vols, Routledge. ISBN 978 1 138 89259 0, 978 1 138 89260 6.

The very earliest paintings, those found in caves throughout the world, and many dating from more than 10,000 years ago, can appear to record events which could, in places, amount to narrative. Although many are strongly figurative, their interpretation is difficult, and it is hard to be sure whether any are truly narrative.

Egypt

The oldest paintings which can be reliably interpreted as being narrative are those of the ancient Egyptians. By about 1300 BC there were many good examples of stories being told through paintings on various supports, most clearly the Books of the Dead which accompanied their burials.

The Weighing of the Heart from the Book of the Dead of Ani (c 1300 BCE), now in The British Museum is one of the clearest examples. In the lower tier of images, the painting is read from the left. It first shows Ani and his wife Tutu entering the assembly of the gods. The centre section shows the god Anubis weighing Ani’s heart against the feather of Maat; should his heart be heavier, then he will not be admitted to heaven.

This procedure is observed by the goddesses Renenutet and Meshkenet, the god Shay, and his own ba. The right section of the lower tier shows the monster Ammut, who is poised to devour Ani’s soul if his heart were to prove heavy, hence unworthy of heaven. Thoth is there to record the outcome. The upper tier shows the other gods in oversight.

Other Egyptian paintings depict action such as wrestling, juggling, and hunting by means of multiple images, normally read from left to right too.

The Mediterranean

Unfortunately the many wall paintings of the ancient Greek and other pre-Roman civilisations in the Mediterranean have largely been lost, although written accounts attest the importance of narrative paintings of historical events to the Greeks.

One of the few to have survived intact is from the Cycladic civilisation on the Greek island of Santorini (Thera), which was destroyed by a huge volcanic eruption in about 1627 BC, engulfing the buildings and preserving them much in the way that Pompeii was. We can therefore be confident that its wall paintings were completed before that date.

The Flotilla Fresco (or Frieze) is a panorama showing a flotilla of boats making their way from one port to another. Although it is not certain, it appears likely that the individual vessels are shown more than once in the same image, combining two or more moments during the story into a single composite image.

The Etruscans

Over a millenium later, but still well before the earliest Roman paintings, the Etruscan civilisation left many tombs with extensive wall paintings. One of the better examples is from the site known as the François Tomb at Vulci, on the coast to the northwest of Rome, Italy.

The Liberation of Caelius Vibenna (c 340 BCE) shows a sequence of what are presumed to be historical events involving the liberation of Caelius Vibenna by Macstrna (identified as Servio Tullio) at the left. In the centre, Larth Ulhtes kills Laris Papathnas Velznach, of the Volsinii tribe. To the right of that are further killings, in each case their names inscribed above the figures.

Other paintings in the same tomb depict the sacrifice of Trojan prisoners, accompanied by one of the earliest depictions of a winged ‘angel’.

The Romans

There are far more extensive paintings which have survived from the Roman civilisation, particularly those from the city of Pompeii which were buried during a catastrophic eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE.

Among the most spectacular are the wall-paintings in the Villa of the Mysteries in Pompeii, showing Dionysian Rites from before about 62 CE. Room 5 contains a frieze of 29 figures at nearly life size, which appear to depict a sequence of ritual events involving a mixture of Pompeiians and deities.

Myths were also a popular subject for Roman artists.

These could be simple images, such as that of Dido and Aeneas, or possibly Venus and Mars, (c 10 BCE – 45 CE) making love.

Medea Planning the Murder of her Children (c 50-75 CE) is slightly more sophisticated, showing Medea preparing to kill her two children as vengeance for Jason abandoning her to marry the King of Corinth’s daughter, Glauce. This was a variant of the story of Medea told in Euripides’ play Medea. The children are shown playing the popular game of knucklebones.

The story of Perseus and Andromeda appears to have been popular in paintings, with several examples known.

This version from Boscotrecase, near the coast at Pompeii, dates from soon after 11 BCE, and puts the story into a larger landscape, much in the way that later landscape painters such as Poussin were to do. I have detailed the full story here, but for the purposes of this article will summarise this section of it.

The daughter of the King of Aethiopia and his wife Cassiopeia is very beautiful, but her mother boasts openly of her beauty and incurs the wrath of Poseidon. The latter sends Cetus, a sea monster, to ravage the Aethiopian coast, and Cetus can only be sated by chaining Andromeda to a rock on the coast, to leave her to be devoured by the monster. As she awaits her death, Perseus flies past, returning from cutting Medusa’s head off. He spots Andromeda, frees her, and kills Cetus.

Andromeda is shown in the centre, on a small pedestal in the rock. Below it and to the left, the gaping mouth of Cetus is shown, as Perseus flies down from the left to rescue Andromeda, kill the sea-monster Cetus, and later marry Andromeda in reward, as shown on the right side of the painting. As with many later paintings, this sophisticated image shows a composite of at least two episodes in the story, and contains two separate versions of both Perseus and Andromeda.

This slightly later version, Perseus Freeing Andromeda (c 50-75 CE), adopts an approach more typical of very much later artists, showing a close-up of the couple. Andromeda is still chained to the rock by her left wrist, and is partially clad rather than naked as the myth related. Perseus has Medusa’s head tucked behind him, the face shown for ease of recognition. He is wearing his winged sandals, and carrying his sword in his left hand. There is no sign of Cetus, though.

Neither face shows anything other than a neutral expression. Their body language is limited too, and Perseus’ right hand in an unnatural position. However, it is not far from the best of the great Masters who were to come more than 1500 years later.

Conclusions

Narrative painting was an important, and at times the dominant, genre from the earliest paintings which we can read today. Although later techniques such as expression of emotion in the face, and clear body language, had yet to develop, the skills of the Roman painters two millenia ago were effective, and well on their way to later sophistication.

References

Haynes S (2000) Etruscan Civilization, A Cultural History, J Paul Getty Museum. ISBN 978 0 89236 600 2.
Ling R (2012) Roman Painting, 2nd edn, Cambridge UP. ISBN 978 0 521 31595 1.
Pappalardo U (2008) The Splendor of Roman Wall Painting, J Paul Getty Museum. ISBN 978 0 89236 958 4.
Pollitt JJ (2014) The Cambridge History of Painting in the Classical World, Cambridge UP. ISBN 978 0 521 86591 3.
Tiradritti F (2008) Egyptian Wall Painting, Abbeville Press. ISBN 978 0 7892 1005 0.

… Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more.
(William Shakespeare, Macbeth Act 5, scene 5.)

You can hardly find any painter of significance during the last quarter of the 1800s who was not greatly influenced by Jules Bastien-Lepage (1848–1884). Although that influence lasted long into the twentieth century, Bastien-Lepage’s promising career as an artist and mentor was cut tragically short when he died at the age of only 36.

Born as Jules Bastien in the village of Damvillers in the northeast of France, he showed an early aptitude for drawing, and his father taught him to paint. He enrolled in the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1868, where he adopted the surname of Bastien-Lepage by incorporating his mother’s maiden name. While there he was taught the Academic and Salon tradition by Cabanel.

He fought, and was wounded, in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1, but managed to have his first work accepted for the Salon in 1870. Unfortunately this, and another acceptance in 1872, passed unnoticed by the critics and public. It was not until 1874 that his portrait of his grandfather, painted at home the previous year, was awarded a third class medal at the Salon, and he started to attract more attention.

He entered the prestigious Prix de Rome in 1875, and by public reaction would have received the award. However, the jury rejected his painting on a trumped-up technicality.

Bastien-Lepage’s submission for the final was The Annunciation to the Shepherds (1875). I should point out that the subject was not of his choosing: the prescribed subject was ‘the annunciation of the nativity of Christ by the angel to the shepherds of Bethlehem’, as in the Gospel of Luke, chapter 2, verses 8-15.

If there is one painting which epitomises Bastien-Lepage’s approach, as a painted manifesto, it is this. Painted with exceptional skill, it builds on tradition rather than discarding it. Its strength is in its compromise between the gilding and Renaissance appearance of the angel, the rural realism of the shepherds who have come from Millet rather than Bethlehem, and the wonderfully controlled looseness and gesture of the darkened landscape.

The story may be a simple one, but Bastien-Lepage wastes not a brushstroke in its telling, in the almost averted facial expressions, the arms frozen in surprise, hands which have just been tending sheep, even their bare and filthy feet.

The jury of the Prix de Rome attempted to avert outcry by awarding Bastien-Lepage a consolation prize, but it was too late: the damage had been done. That damage stopped him from pursuing an Academic future, and for the good of art, he retreated to his rural village, and the pursuit of truth in his painting.

His transition was not quite as sudden. He painted some parting Academic works with a difference, such as his Achilles and Priam (or Priam at the Feet of Achilles) (1876). Here, Hector has been killed by Achilles, the Greek warrior, who then treats the body disrespectfully and refuses to return it for burial. Hermes escorts King Priam of Troy, the father of Hector, to plead with Achilles, as shown here. Achilles is deeply moved by this, relents, and calls a truce to allow Hector’s body to be returned for the funeral.

This was his second and final attempt to secure the Prix de Rome, and was again unsuccessful.

His Diogenes (1877) takes human anguish further still, in the depiction of this ancient Greek philosopher and cynic. Traditionally shown living in a barrel, Bastien-Lepage gives him cruelly mutilated feet, and one of the most expressive faces since Rembrandt. You will see this painting erroneously dated to 1873 in many places, although it is clearly marked as being signed by the artist in 1877.

Resting Peasants (c 1877) gives us a glimpse of the looseness of Bastien-Lepage when painting oil studies, and appears to have been an early precursor to the next finished work.

Les Foins (Haymakers or Hay making) (1877) was Bastien-Lepage’s return to the Salon of 1878. Although its canvas is almost square, its composition – particularly the recumbent man – and the lay of brushstrokes makes it feel almost panoramic. The artist’s cousin, Marie-Adèle Robert, was the model, and her utterly vacant stare is piercing. Its appearance at the Salon resulted in debate over the harsh life that it portrayed.

The following year, Bastien-Lepage returned with what is now sometimes known as October or Potato Gatherers (1878), but was originally shown as Saison d’Octobre: Récolte des Pommes de Terre. His cousin modelled again, still showing the hard graft typical of Millet’s paintings, but earlier debate was replaced by delight: it was a huge success. And somehow his almost square canvas once more becomes a broad panorama.

That same year, he painted the more personal, and wonderfully painterly, La Toussaint (All Souls’ Day) (1878), a heart-warming outing for an old man and his two grandchildren among the increasingly industrialised fields around towns.

The next and final article in this series will show some of his portraits and late works.

References

Wikipedia.
Appreciation by William S Feldman – strongly recommended.

To my surprise, one story which keeps recurring in my forays into narrative paintings is that of the rescue of Andromeda by Perseus. This is told in several sources, most notably Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and has been painted by dozens of well-known artists over the last couple of millenia.

The Story

I have detailed the full story here. Considering just the episode involving Andromeda, it reduces to the following summary:

• Andromeda is the beautiful daughter of the King and Queen of Aethiopia;
• Her mother, Cassiopeia, considers her so beautiful that she boasts that Andromeda is more beautiful than the Nereids;
• This boast offends Poseidon, who sends Cetus, a sea monster, to ravage the coast as punishment;
• The king is told by an oracle that the only way to be rid of Cetus is to sacrifice Andromeda to it;
• Her father therefore has Andromeda stripped and chained to a rock on the coast, to await Cetus;
• Perseus is returning on his winged sandals after he has beheaded Medusa;
• Perseus sees Andromeda as he is flying past, so stops;
• Perseus frees Andromeda, but keeps her there to lure Cetus to him, and dons Hades’ helmet to make him invisible;
• When Cetus turns up to devour Andromeda, Perseus kills the sea monster;
• In return for rescuing her, Perseus wins the hand of Andromeda in marriage.

During the Middle Ages, this became modified to tell that Perseus was riding Pegasus, the winged horse, rather than flying with his winged sandals. This was expressed fully in Giovanni Boccaccio’s Genealogia deorum gentilium libri, which first appeared in 1360, and was revised continuously until the author’s death in 1374.

Analysis

Any painting of Andromeda alone fails any reasonable test for narrative, as it depicts but a single event and moment in time. Strangely there is a substantial minority of paintings which show Andromeda naked (or nearly so) and chained to a rock. Although a plausible excuse for showing an extremely beautiful female nude, there are inevitable overtones of rape fantasy (which are strong enough when the whole story is told faithfully). I will therefore not consider those non-narrative paintings any further.

Whether the artist is conforming to the Aristotelian structure of beginning, middle, and end, or the quest for peripateia, a complete depiction of the narrative will need to include references to Andromeda as a sacrifice to Cetus (past, or beginning), Perseus’ arrival (the pregnant moment, or middle), and the killing of Cetus (the better future, or end). However, I also include those paintings in which Cetus is either absent or very hard to discern.

The main decision for any painter trying to tell this story is thus choosing the exact moment to show. Strictly speaking, according to the text, Cetus did not appear until after Perseus had arrived and freed Andromeda, and at that time he was invisible because he was wearing Hades’ helmet. The best solutions are therefore going to vary somewhat from the text, in order to generate strong visual narrative.

This article considers the paintings in which Cetus is missing, and those timed to show an event before Perseus kills Cetus. The next article will look at those timed after Cetus’ death.

Cetus Absent or Hidden

The anonymous Pompeiian wall-painting Perseus Freeing Andromeda (c 50-75 CE) shows a close-up of the couple. Andromeda is still chained to the rock by her left wrist, and is partially clad rather than naked. Perseus has Medusa’s head tucked behind him, the face shown for ease of recognition. He is wearing his winged sandals, and carrying his sword in his left hand. There is no sign of Cetus, and the viewer is expected to complete the remainder of the story in the absence of any further cues or clues as to its outcome.

One and a half millenia later, Giorgio Vasari (1511–1574) painted his Perseus and Andromeda (1570-2) on slate. The same central motif, that of Perseus releasing Andromeda from her bonds, is at its centre. Andromeda is naked, and looks weakly disgruntled rather than relieved in any way. Perseus has a complete set of equipment, including his winged footwear, the head of Medusa (left outside its bag), and an unusually winged helmet, which is clearly not making him invisible.

In the far distance on the left, it is possible that Vasari has shown Cetus, but that is not established clearly. Also at the left is a horse, possibly intended to be Pegasus, but left deliberately ambiguous. The waters around are embellished with distracting nymphs and swimmers, and various activities are taking place on the coast behind. There is no indication of the menace posed by Cetus, nor of its threat to Andromeda.

Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640) painted several different versions of this story. His Perseus and Andromeda (1639-40) shows the same moment as the paintings above, of Perseus freeing Andromeda. Andromeda is naked, but tied with rope rather than chains, and has an odd non-committal smile, as if she is just realising that she will have to hang around for Cetus to turn up.

Perseus wears a fetching suit of armour without any winged sandals, and Pegasus is seen in the distance, down on the beach. Hades’ helmet, which will shortly render Perseus invisible, has been placed on the rock ledge, at the bottom left hand corner of the painting.

Rubens does manage a useful reference to the future, though, with a pair of matchmaking putti above the couple to indicate the eventual outcome. If Cetus is shown, it is far down on the beach, and hardly an imminent danger.

Cetus Alive

Given the importance of Cetus to the story, it is not surprising that most who have painted it have included the monster within their motif. An earlier Roman version from Boscotrecase, near the coast at Pompeii, dates from soon after 11 BCE, and puts the story into a larger landscape, much in the way that later landscape painters such as Poussin were to do.

Andromeda is shown in the centre, on a small pedestal in the rock. Below it and to the left, the gaping mouth of Cetus is shown, as Perseus flies down from the left to rescue Andromeda, kill the sea-monster Cetus, and later marry Andromeda in reward, as shown on the right side of the painting. As with many later paintings, this sophisticated image shows a composite of at least two episodes in the story, and contains two separate versions of both Perseus and Andromeda.

Piero di Cosimo (1462–1521) also shows multiple events within his large Andromeda freed by Perseus (c 1510-15). Centred on the great bulk of Cetus, Perseus stands on its back and is about to hack at its neck with his sword. At the upper right, Perseus is shown a few moments earlier, as he was flying past in his winged sandals. To the left of Cetus, Andromeda is still secured to the rock by a prominent red fabric binding (not chains), and is bare only to her waist.

In the foreground in front of Cetus are Andromeda’s parents, the King and Queen, still stricken in grief. Near them is a group of courtiers with ornate head-dress. But in the right foreground is a celebratory party already in full swing, complete with musicians and dancers, to feast their delivery from the attacks by Cetus.

Continuous (or composite) narrative is even more extensive here, with different passages showing quite different events, in no particular narrative sequence.

Not known for his narrative paintings, Titian (Tiziano Vecelli) (1490–1576) manages to combine an unusually-posed nude study of Andromeda, with both Perseus and Cetus, in his Perseus and Andromeda (1553-9). Andromeda is still in her chains, gazing at Perseus as he appears to tumble from the sky, ready to hack at the sea monster. Cetus obligingly opens it vast maw, ready to swallow him whole, although it is in fact much further away.

Titian leaves the story open, though, and gives no clue as to its outcome, a curious lack of resolution.

It is perhaps Giuseppe Cesari (1568–1640) who realises the best account, in his Perseus and Andromeda (1592). Andromeda is naked, chained, and looks anxiously towards Perseus, as Cetus announces its intent to devour her. Perseus is astride a wingless Pegasus, sword in hand, the other holding the ghastly head of Medusa.

Look also at Cesari’s background, which shows the coastal ruins which have resulted from Cetus’ previous attacks. Although there are no solid clues as to the eventual outcome, this account is well-developed and almost complete. Its composition is also precursor to those of Leighton and Ingres three centuries into the future.

Joachim Wtewael (1566–1638) uses the same elements in his Perseus Releases Andromeda (1611). Andromeda lacks the fearful facial expression, but her hands suggest emotional tension. Cetus appears slightly less prepared for a drop-in snack, and Perseus’ mount is now tan rather than white, and still wingless.

The coastal scene behind this action does not appear to have suffered any attacks from the monster, though. He fills the area around Andromeda’s feet with a rich variety of shells, whose relevance is unclear, a human skull, skeleton, and some bones. These would imply that the site was used for previous sacrifices, something which goes beyond the original story.

Gustave Moreau (1826–1898), in his Perseus and Andromeda (1870), provides another variation of the three elements set out so well by Cesari. He puts the shackled Andromeda, almost naked, in the foreground, with Cetus looking surprised at the imminent arrival from the sky of Perseus. He is not astride Pegasus, but wears his winged sandals, and flourishes the polished shield still bearing an image of Medusa’s head.

Andromeda’s facial expression is odd: her eyes appear closed, as if in sleep, perhaps already resigned to her fate?

Last in this section is Frederic, Lord Leighton‘s (1830–1896) Perseus and Andromeda (1891). This shows the ‘invisible’ Perseus astride Pegasus shooting arrows into Cetus, while the monster surrounds Andromeda. Cetus is shown as a fairly conventional fire-breathing dragon, complete with stereotypical wings and a long tail. Andromeda is not naked, but some modesty is preserved by draping a white robe around her waist.

The next article will complete my account, starting with paintings in which Cetus is shown as being killed by Perseus.

In the previous article, I showed examples of paintings of this classical myth in which Cetus, the sea monster, was absent or still alive. I come now to consider those in which Cetus is shown to be dead, or well on its way to death.

Cetus Dead or Doomed

Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640) had earlier given a fuller account of the story in his Perseus and Andromeda (c 1622) (see his later painting shown in the previous article). Andromeda is almost naked, and now fully unchained, on the left. Perseus is clearly in the process of claiming her hand as his reward, for which he is being crowned with laurels, as the victor. He wears his winged sandals, and holds the polished shield which still reflects Medusa’s face and snake hair.

One of several putti (essential for the forthcoming marriage) holds Hades’ helmet, and much of the right of the painting is taken up by the winged Pegasus, covering both versions of the myth. At the lower edge is the dead Cetus, its fearsome mouth wide open.

Anton Raphael Mengs (1728–1779) includes the same elements in his Perseus and Andromeda (1773-6), but set very differently. Here Andromeda is more fully dressed than Perseus, although it is the latter who is centre stage. Mengs covers both versions of the myth by giving Perseus winged sandals and Pegasus, and Medusa’s head is safely stowed in his scarlet bag. A winged putto, looking quite serious, is skipping off to the right, and at their feet rests the great snout of the dead Cetus, to which Perseus’ right index finger points.

I fancy that Mengs has timed this a little too late in the narrative, though, when it has already resolved its greatest tensions.

Félix Vallotton (1865-1925) has caught the height of peripateia and action in his Perseus Killing the Dragon (1910), as Perseus is killing Cetus. He then appears to use it to make a parody of the story, and narrative painting as a genre.

Andromeda, long freed from her chains, squats, her back towards the action, at the far left. Her face shows a grimace of slightly anxious disgust towards the monster. Perseus is also completely naked, with no sign of winged sandals, helmet of Hades, or a bag containing Medusa’s head. He is braced in a diagonal, his arms reaching up to exert maximum thrust through the shaft of a spear which impales Cetus through the head. The monster is shown as an alligator, its fangs bared from an open mouth.

Cetus Absent then Alive

Edward Burne-Jones (1833–1898) painted his Perseus and Andromeda (1876) as a preparatory study for two of the paintings in his great and unfinished series telling the whole myth of Perseus. Reverting to the continuous narrative more typical of the Renaissance, he composited two separate events within the story into the single canvas. The left half shows Perseus, just arrived at the rock to which Andromeda is chained; the right shows him doing battle with Cetus.

The eighth painting in Burne-Jones’ Perseus series, The Rock of Doom (1884-5), shows Perseus discovering Andromeda chained to the rock awaiting her fate in the maw of Cetus. His face looks hesitant and uncertain here, and he has removed Hades’ helmet to make himself visible to Andromeda. Medusa’s head is safely stowed in the kibisis on his left arm, and Burne-Jones is faithful to the original Greek myth in having Perseus arrive on his winged sandals, not Pegasus.

For her part, Andromeda is naked, and looking coy and afraid, her face downcast. She is still chained to the rock, awaiting rescue. In the background, Burne-Jones shows what is presumably the capital of Aethiopia, or may have accepted Strabo’s attribution to Jaffa.

There are some minor discrepancies between the forms of the rocks and chain shown in the ninth painting, The Doom Fulfilled (1888), and those in the previous work in the series, although Burne-Jones maintains continuity in the figures. Keeping Andromeda unchained in situ, Perseus dons the helmet of Hades to become invisible again, and Cetus appears, ready to devour the woman.

Perseus is here swathed in Cetus’ coils (whose form resembles an ornate capital letter), brandishing his sword and ready to slaughter the monster and bring its terror to an end. The background view of a city has been obscured by a rock wall, and this small inlet is now enclosed by a low causeway of flat-topped rocks, not unlike those of the Giant’s Causeway in the north of the Irish Sea.

Angelica Rescued

Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso is an epic poem containing, among others, the tale of the knight Roger or Ruggiero, which is uncannily similar to the story of Perseus and Andromeda, although removed from the greater narrative of Perseus. I therefore include some example paintings of this version of what must be a common myth, for comparison.

One day, when out riding near the coast of Brittany, on his hippogriff (half horse, half eagle, so not too different from Pegasus), Roger finds Angelica chained to a rock on the Isle of Tears. He discovers that she was abducted and stripped by barbarians, who left her there as a sacrifice to a sea monster. As Roger approaches to free her, the monster appears from the sea, and Roger kills it by driving his lance in between its eyes. He then rides off with the rescued Angelica.

Ingres shows the story largely according to the original text, with Angelica’s head cast back almost unnaturally in her pleading look towards Roger. She appears to have a goitre, something which did not escape the critics of the day. Even so, the painting was purchased for King Louis XVIII and was installed in the Palace of Versailles from 1820.

In his first painting of the scene, Böcklin provides us with a composite image of the story. Angelica is bound to a tree, around which the fearsome sea monster is already coiled. Roger approaches from behind, riding a conventional horse, his lance ready to kill the unsuspecting monster. Nowhere does Böcklin show the sea, or show this as being particularly coastal.

Böcklin shows the story at a momentary pause in the action, just before Angelica can plead with the knight to save her life, before the monster sees Roger approaching, and before Roger can try to kill the monster. Angelica’s face seems almost emotionless, Roger’s is concealed, and the monster hardly looks menacing. There is almost no body language either. Böcklin has come close to painting a pre-action group portrait, rather than the vigorous account of a knightly rescue.

Six years later, Böcklin revisited the story, although unfortunately this painting appears to have gone missing at present. He has jumped forward to the moment after the climax of the action, and the monster’s blood is still pouring from its severed neck. Roger, his face concealed, is draping a robe over Angelica’s naked body. She stands, still transfixed by the fear which has now been resolved, her face showing the imminent relief of stress by tears. Her hands are held up in helplessness and surrender to events, and her knees slightly flexed in fear.

And there are more

Tales of rescue of a damsel in distress by a knight in shining armour are stereotypes of the fictional ‘age of chivalry’ which became such alluring motifs for the romantic, and Pre-Raphaelite, artists. Here are a couple as examples.

William Etty (1787–1849) painted his Britomart Redeems Faire Amoret in 1833, and may have induced John Millais (1829–1896) to attempt his one and only female nude, in his The Knight Errant (1870). In the latter case, the story of being stripped, tied up, and abused had left its classical roots, and mere robbers were to blame. The beautiful and naked victim still had to be rescued by a gallant knight, though.

Conclusions

Although I have a deep discomfort at the persistence and popularity of this group of myths and legends, and their underlying misogyny, they have become important narratives for artists. They have generally been tackled well as stories, and resulted in some superb paintings. If you are wondering where are the versions by women artists, perhaps the best response is that the likes of Artemisia Gentileschi and Angelica Kauffman were rightly far too busy working on their next versions of Judith and Holofernes or Ariadne on Naxos to have time to fuel such male fantasies. The Andromeda myth, and its many variants and relatives, have flourished only because they have been told and painted by men for men.

What we have seen in this succession of great paintings does, I believe, confirm the doctrine proposed by Aristotle, formalised by Alberti, and scrutinised by Lessing. Depicting the moment of peripeteia, with its cues and clues to the past, and its links to the future, is the most successful.

In the case of Andromeda’s rescue by Perseus, the pregnant moment is when Perseus is getting the better of Cetus. This ensures that Andromeda’s previous exposure as a sacrificial victim is clear, that the ‘new knowledge’ of Perseus has changed her fortune, and that the instant of Cetus’ death changes her fortune for the better.

This and related ‘knight in shining armour’ narratives are not complex by any means, but have frequently been addressed using continuous narrative to composite two or more events into a single image, or by series of paintings. Indeed one of the most successful accounts, that from Boscotrecase, Italy, is one of the earliest and most sophisticated narrative paintings, and uses continuous narrative to great effect.

There might seem to be a void in the history of painting between the collapse of the Roman Empire after 300 CE, and the arrival of the ‘Gothic’ style around 1200. Whether you refer to the period as the Middle Ages or the somewhat blunter Dark Ages, this is the bit where most histories of art concentrate on architecture.

The truth is not only rather different, but quite distressing. For not only does there seem to have been quite a lot of painting in various parts of Europe over this period, but a great deal of it has been destroyed, and not just in the distant past.

The oldest known panel painting altarpiece in England, the Westminster Retable, was progressively broken up and used as wood for furniture between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries; it was only in 1827 that it was recognised as being anything worth conserving. Several important works, including ancient frescoes, were severely damaged or destroyed completely during the Second World War, particularly in the allied bombing of Padua.

What remains has also been relatively poorly studied. I have yet to find a clear, coherent, and well-illustrated account of painting between 300 and 1400 CE, so this article and the next are going to be quite exploratory in nature. Please do not hesitate to correct me, or point me in the direction of better sources.

Overlooking those difficulties, paintings over this period are very different from those which preceded, or which followed, at least until the twentieth century. It is all too easy to dismiss them with condescension, as being ‘primitive’ or ‘crude’. I hope that the examples here will dispel such feelings.

The oldest surviving paintings which remain in good condition tend to be the ‘miniatures’ incorporated into religious manuscripts. Among the oldest is The Vienna Genesis from the first half of the sixth century, which was created on vellum which had been dyed purple. It probably originated in Syria, and has illustrations to accompany its texts from the Old Testament book of Genesis.

The story of Rebecca and Eliezer, shown here, comes from Genesis chapter 24. Abraham wanted to find a wife for his son Isaac, so sent his servant Eliezer back to the homeland of Mesopotamia to look for one. Eliezer reached the city of Nahor, where he stopped to water his camels and rest from his long journey. He pulled up at a well outside the city, where a young woman, Rebecca, had just drawn water. She offered him her water, and he recognised her as the chosen bride for Isaac, so presented her with the betrothal gifts which he had brought with him.

This exquisitely-painted miniature uses ‘continuous narrative’ to good effect. In the background is a symbolic representation of Nahor. Rebecca is shown at the left, having walked out of the city with her pitcher on her shoulder, along a colonnade. In front of her is a pagan water nymph, presumably the spirit of that well. Rebeccah is shown a second time, giving Eliezer her pitcher to slake his thirst. His train of camels is also taking water.

The miniature above, showing the miracle of the Healing of the Blind Man, and that below, of The Raising of Lazarus, are two folios from another slightly later religious book, Purpureus Rossanensis (The Rossano Gospels) (c 550 CE). This is thought to be the oldest surviving illustrated manuscript of the New Testament.

In the story of the healing of the blind man, Christ comes across a man who had been blind from birth. He mixes his saliva with some mud, and applies it to the blind man’s eyelids, telling him to go and wash his eyes. He does so in the section at the right, and finds that he can see at last. This was also famously painted by Duccio nearly 800 years later, shown below.

I will explore the narrative of the raising of Lazarus in more detail in the next article.

Three centuries later, in the late ninth century, a complete bible was made at Rheims on purple-dyed parchment, for Charles the Bald to present to Pope John the eighth on 25 December 875, the day of Charles’ coronation as emperor. Its surviving 334 folios contain 24 full-page paintings, of which I show just three. The work has been attributed to Ingobertus, and has remained in the Benedictine Abbey of San Paolo fuori le Mura, Rome, since the coronation.

Deuteronomy summarises the three long sermons of Moses which make up the bulk of this, the fifth book of the Old Testament. At the top, Moses is seen in his wilderness wanderings, and receiving the law. Below that he is shown preaching to the Israelites, and at the bottom they are seen entering the Promised Land, I believe.

The painting for the book of Proverbs shows scenes relating to Solomon, to whom they are attributed. In the centre, Solomon sits in judgement. Below that is a clear depiction of the Judgement of Solomon over the two women who both claimed a living baby was theirs. At the top are other scenes of Solomon’s life and reign.

I find the painting for the book of Revelation to be the most curious, given the quite graphic verbal descriptions of the apocalypse found in its text. However, I think these images show Saint John on the Island of Patmos (centre), which was later to be a popular theme for paintings, and the ‘seven churches of Asia’ to which the epistolary content of the book was addressed.

The Menologion of Basil II is an illuminated church calendar and service book compiled for the Byzantine Emperor Basil II, who ruled between 976 and 1025. It contains about 430 miniatures painted by eight different artists, each of whom is named. My example folio from this book shows the Adoration of the Magi, a simple part of the story of the birth of Christ, in which three ‘wise men’ (Magi) observed a comet, interpreted it as a sign of a great birth, and travelled to Bethlehem to offer gifts to the infant Christ.

Unlike later versions, this painting is sparse, and omits distracting detail such as the animals associated with the shed in Bethlehem. The infant Christ is sat on the Virgin Mary’s knee, and an angel brings the three wise men to present their gifts and pay their respects.

Probably the best-known and most extensive embroidery showing a historical event in Europe, the Bayeux Tapestry was made in England about ten years afte the Norman Conquest of 1066 CE, to record not just the invasion and Battle of Hastings, but the background to those momentous events. It is read (as I would expect!) from left to right, and starts with Harold (before he became King) being sent to Normandy by King Edward the Confessor. William (later to be conqueror of England) invites Harold on a campaign against Conan II, the Duke of Brittany.

As with the entire embroidery, Scenes 16 and 17 (shown above) are accompanied by Latin text to support their meaning:
Scene 16: HIC WILLEM[US] DUX ET EXERCITUS EIUS VENERUNT AD MONTE[M] MICHAELIS (Here Duke William and his army came to Mont Saint-Michel)
Scene 17: ET HIC TRANSIERUNT FLUMEN COSNONIS, HIC HAROLD DUX TRAHEBAT EOS DE ARENA (and here they crossed the Couesnon River, here Duke Harold dragged them from the sand).

These events are shown clearly in the embroidery above, with Mont Saint-Michel shown as a green hillock just to the right of centre. Inevitably many of its characters are shown several time across its length, although they only seem to appear once in any given scene.

The next article will cover the period from 1100 CE to the early Renaissance, concentrating particularly on depictions of the story of the raising of Lazarus.

References

Sekules V (2001) Medieval Art, Oxford History of Art, Oxford UP. ISBN 978 0 19 284241 1.
Bartlett R ed (2001) The Medieval World Complete, Thames & Hudson. ISBN 978 0 500 28333 2.

The Vienna Genesis.
The Rossano Gospels.
Bible of San Paolo fuori le Mura.
Menologion of Basil II.
Bayeux Tapestry.

The start of our journey through some of the wonderful art of the Middle Ages relied on ‘miniature’ paintings made on vellum and included in religious manuscripts, and the embroidery of the Bayeux Tapestry. There are surviving wall paintings, including frescoes, but most are in a sorry state of repair, and their details all but vanished.

Thankfully the situation changes radically once we consider works completed between 1100 CE and the early Renaissance after 1300: there are many wall and panel paintings to study. I will first offer a small selection to show how they evolved, then focus on the common theme of the New Testament story of the miracle of the Raising of Lazarus, and trace that through time. Almost all these paintings come from Italy; I will look at the early paintings from northern Europe in a future article.

Bonaventura Berlinghieri’s panel painting of Saint Francis of Assisi and Scenes of His Life (1235), from the altar in Pescia, must be one of the most beautiful objects created before the Renaissance. Around the central figure of Saint Francis are six scenes. Reading from the top left they represent him kneeling in the wilderness, where he had his vision and received the stigmata (marks of crucifixion on the hands and feet, as shown in the central figure). Below that is the episode in his life which is perhaps remembered by most, when he preached to the birds, then at the bottom a miracle in which he healed a girl with a dislocated neck.

On the right are three of the miracles attributed to him: that at the top is the ‘miracle of the pear’ in which Saint Francis coaxed a crippled boy to stand by holding out a pear, as well as a leper who is waiting to be healed. Below that is the healing of a cripple in the waters of a bath, and at the bottom is the casting out of demons.

This pattern of showing key scenes from the life of a saint was to become an established approach for many altarpieces and other polyptychs through the Renaissance.

Giotto’s (1266–1337) frescoes in the Scrovegni Chapel at Padua show a more elaborate depiction of The Adoration of the Magi (c 1305). The infant Christ rests on the Virgin Mary’s knee; she was originally clad in her signature ultramarine blue, but that has worn away with the years. Mary is accompanied by Joseph and an angel, and the Holy Family is within a wooden shed. The three ‘wise men’ pay their respects and present their gifts, but are now accompanied by camels and at least two attendants. The comet which attracted their attention is shown as a fireball crossing the sky.

Bartolo di Fredi (1330–1409), in his spectacular frescoes in San Gimignano, tackles a crowd scene in his The Israelites safely cross the Red Sea, but Pharaoh and his troops are drowned (1356). This depicts the Old Testament story from Exodus, in which Moses parts the waters of the Red Sea and leads the Israelites across, but their Egyptian pursuers are overwhelmed as the waters return, and drown them.

As in most other paintings of the period before the development of realism during the Renaissance, di Fredi painted the elements and symbols within the story, but did not attempt to cast them into an imagined reality. On the right, the Israelites are making steady progress on the carpet of dry land which Moses provided them. On the left, the Egyptians are in the water, emphasised by the presence of fish and fishermen in the background.

The Raising of Lazarus

The story of Lazarus is one of the more popular miracles in the New Testament, although it is only contained in the Gospel of Saint John (chapter 11, verses 1-44).

Christ is told that Lazarus has fallen ill, and his two sisters seek his help. However, Jesus tells his disciples that he intends waiting for Lazarus to die, so that God can be glorified. He then delays for two days before returning to Bethany, by which time Lazarus has been dead and buried for four days. His sisters and the village are still in grief and mourning, so Jesus asks for the stone covering Lazarus’ tomb to be removed. Jesus them commanded Lazarus to come out of his tomb, and Lazarus emerges, still covered in the linen cloths used for burial. Jesus tells the people to remove those cloths and let him go.

The Raising of Lazarus from The Rossano Gospels (c 550 CE) shows this in a continuous strip, with Lazarus’s sisters pleading at the feet of Christ in the centre. At the left are his disciples, and at the right the completion of the miracle, with the tomb opened and Lazarus emerging, alive in his funeral bandages. This is a simple story told simply and very effectively.

The righthand section of a fresco from the church of San Baudelio in northern Castilla, Healing of the Blind Man and The Raising of Lazarus (c 1129-34), tells this in a single image (as it does for the healing of the blind man on the left, too). The moment shown is the removal of the stone from a coffin-like grave, revealing Lazarus underneath.

In choosing just this single moment in time, the painting relies on the viewer being able to add the previous events, and to resolve the story of the miracle, just as is required for the blind man on the left.

Duccio (c 1255–1318) opts for more complexity, in his marvellous panel painting of The Raising of Lazarus (1310–11). Lazarus’ two sisters are shown pleading with Christ, reminding the viewer of the start of the story, but at the right the stone has been removed from the tomb, and Lazarus appears alive again.

Although Duccio has painted some wonderfully realistic faces, there is barely a glimmer of any expression on them: they are frozen in serious mode, even that of the sisters and Lazarus. However he has started to show some body language, with hands held out, and one bystander holding his cloak to his nose in case the opened tomb stinks.

Giotto’s early version of The Raising of Lazarus (c 1305), one of his frescoes in the Scrovegni Chapel, Padua, uses a similar composite image to tell the story. At the left, Lazarus’ sisters remain at Christ’s feet, but at the right the stone has been removed and Lazarus – still not looking in the best of health – has emerged from his tomb.

Many of the figures have their arms raised or active: Christ’s in blessing Lazarus to achieve the miracle, others in amazement, but facial expressions are still fixed and devoid of emotion.

Giotto’s later version from Scenes from the Life of Mary Magdalene (c 1325) in the Lower Church of San Francesco at Assisi, has similar narrative elements, but the crowd is now tucked away off to the left, to be replaced by a more developed landscape. Some of the faces are now modelled to show what appears to be the beginnings of emotion: Lazarus’ sister looks to have been weeping in grief, for instance.

Giotto’s high reputation is well deserved. Here Lippo Memmi (1291–1356) has painted his Resurrection of Lazarus (c 1325) in his frescoes at San Gimignano. His figures are much older in style, with simpler modelling of their faces and garments. His approach to the narrative is made more difficult, as Christ, Lazarus’ sisters, and the tomb are squashed together. Lacking separation in space, it is harder to envisage them as being separated in time, which could confuse some viewers. He does, though, use ample body language to help tell the story.

Giovanni di Paolo (1403–1482) painted his The Resurrection of Lazarus (1426) a century later, when the Renaissance was in full swing. But this panel from the predella in San Domenico, Siena, is still firmly rooted in Duccio’s panel, even down to its composition, and the chap covering his nose with his cloak. The positions and colour-codings of the various figures are remarkably similar, although di Paolo has started to elaborate their hair, clothing, and landscape behind.

And another three hundred years later…

Conclusions

Narrative painting continued to thrive during the Middle Ages, although surviving European examples are almost confined to telling stories from the Bible. Continuous or composite narratives, in which more than one moment in time is shown in a single image, were popular, and even in quite simple compositions proved effective, and not confusing. However, they rely to a degree on spatial separation, and may become more confusing in more condensed images.

By the time of Duccio, around 1300, some painters were using body language very effectively in their narratives. However, facial expressions were little used until the rise in realism of the Renaissance. Most earlier paintings which modelled faces realistically used fixed neutral expressions throughout, although Giotto’s later paintings were starting to show more emotion in faces.

The best artists of the Middle Ages created superb paintings by any standards, even though they did not wish to depict any literal reality.

Some narrative paintings need thinking about, to understand their story properly. Sometimes, the more that you think (and read) about a particular painting, the more puzzling it becomes.

Take the two paintings which I recently showed from an Etruscan tomb, excavated by and named after Alessandro François, in 1857.

The Liberation of Caelius Vibenna (c 340 BCE) shows a captive being freed at the left, then a series of quite gruesome killings.

Opposite that painting in this tomb was a fresco showing someone calmly beheading a naked youth, which I interpreted as being the sacrifice of Trojan prisoners.

Don’t these strike you as odd scenes to have painted in your family tomb? Given that the Trojans were taken prisoner around a millenium earlier, even an Etruscan warrior proud of those whom he had killed would seem to have odd tastes for their interment.

Who was doing what to whom?

The first step in discovering what these paintings are really about, and how they come to be there, is to identify the figures shown, and the actions taking place. This is difficult for Etruscan art, because, unlike the Greeks and Romans, they left virtually no written texts which might help us, and almost all that we know about them has come from the study of their tombs and grave-goods. Thankfully there are now some excellent accounts written by scholars, which I will rely on.

The first painting, The Liberation of Caelius Vibenna, reads from left to right as:

• Macstrna (Romanised as Mastarna, who later became Servius Tullius, the legendary sixth king of Rome, and was assassinated in 535 BCE) liberates Caile Vipinas (Caelius Vibenna), a local Etruscan hero;
• the Etruscan hero Larth Ulthes (Lars Voltius) kills Laris Papathnas Velznach (Lars Papatius or Fabatius, a Volsinian);
• the Etruscan hero Rasce (Rascius) kills Pesna Arcmasnas Sveamach, who is Sovanese);
• the Etruscan hero Aule Vipinas (Aulus Vibenna, brother of Caile or Caelius) kills someone whose name is lost, but was an ally of Rome).

Note that each Etruscan hero is carefully made to look the same, with the same brown hair and beard, to aid identification.

During the troubled years prior to Macstrna/Mastarna becoming King of Rome, some Etruscans allied themselves with Rome. The killings shown here were part of a surprise attack by loyal Etruscan warriors on those allies of Rome, which the heroes inevitably won. This painting is therefore a celebration of that victory as an achievement of loyal Etruscans some two centuries previously.

Those who fancied even more gore could peek around the corner into the vestibule of the tomb, where there is a painting of Marce Camitlnas thrusting his sword into a subjugate Cneve Tarchunies Rumach, better known as Gnaeus Tarquinius, a Roman who may have been involved in the capture of the brothers Caile and Aule Vipinas (Caelius and Aulus Vibenna).

These paintings appeared on one side of the tomb; the other side contained the far older Greek narrative of the sacrifice of the Trojan prisoners, a more sophisticated painting which was almost certainly copied in part from a Greek original. Other similar images have been found in Italy, such as the Revil Cista shown below.

Troy and its aftermath

Reading this from the left, we have:

• Agamemnon, King of the Mycenaeans and brother-in-law of Helen, who was murdered after his return from Troy;
• the ghost of Patroclus, beloved comrade and friend of Achilles, who was killed in battle by Hector of Troy;
• the winged Etruscan female angel of death, Vanth, whose wings embrace Patroclus and Achilles;
• Achilles, who is leaning forward to behead the Trojan slave at his feet, but was killed before the fall of Troy when Paris shot an arrow into his vulnerable heel;
• the Etruscan death demon, Charun, armed with his hammer;
• Telemonian Ajax, who dies by falling on his own sword at the end of the Trojan War;
• a Trojan slave waiting to be killed;
• Locrian Ajax, who drowns returning from Troy, and is holding another Trojan slave off the right edge of this image.

To understand these, we must go back to the legend of the Fall of Troy.

Troy was a legendary (and probably historical) city which ruled over a substantial area of the west of what is now Turkey. Designed to be impregnable, it had accumulated considerable riches when the early Greek civilisation was becoming established. Eris, the goddess of strife and discord, gave a golden apple “for the fairest” woman, leading to a contest between the goddesses Athena, Hera, and Aphrodite. This was judged by Paris, son of King Priam of Troy.

The goddesses played dirty, and each promised Paris a reward should he choose them. When he chose Aphrodite as the winner, she had promised him the hand of the most beautiful woman in the world, Helen, who also happened to be married to the King of Sparta, Menelaus. Aphrodite then helped Paris seduce and abduct Helen back to Troy.

When Helen was being courted, her unsuccessful suitors formed a pact to return her to Sparta in the event that anyone dared try to seduce her, and Agamemnon, King of the Mycenaeans and brother of Menelaus (so brother-in-law of Helen) raised a fleet of more than a thousand ships (“was this the face that launched a thousand ships?”) and a great army to attack Troy.

For ten years, the Mycenaeans (Greeks) and their allies laid siege to Troy, during which many of their heroes were killed in battle. The war was not just long, but very bitter, and the warriors became vengeful, and both sides committed atrocities. At the end of this period Odysseus (Ulysses) had the idea of building a wooden horse, into which Greek soldiers would be placed, in order to get them into the city: the Trojan horse.

The Greeks landed this horse on the shore, and sailed off, apparently leaving it as a peace offering. In fact they sailed only just out of sight, and waited.

The Trojans hauled the horse up and into the city, dismantling some of their defences to get it through the walls. They then went and drank and feasted what they had presumed to be their victory.

While the Trojans were busy getting drunk, the Greek soldiers inside the horse let themselves out through a trapdoor, lit signal bonfires to summon the Greek ships, and opened up the rest of Troy’s defences. The Greek army poured into the city as its inhabitants were still recovering from their partying. The city was sacked: all the precious metals and jewels were stripped, the temples desecrated, most of its population murdered, and the buildings were set alight.

Some prisoners were taken. Andromache, widow of the great Trojan warrior Hector, was given to Neoptolemus, and Hecuba, Priam’s widow, to Odysseus. Astyanax, infant son of Hector and Andromache, was killed by being thrown from the city’s walls.

The dominant aim was to completely destroy the city of Troy and its lands, and to kill almost all of its people. It was calculated genocide.

(It is commonly supposed that the legend of Troy is told in Homer’s epic Iliad. In fact, that covers only a small fraction of the whole, and does not, for example, even mention the Trojan horse. However the overall legend remains deeply embedded in much of European culture – even in our language, and in computer security.)

If this scene makes a direct literary reference, it is to Book 21 of the Iliad:
[Achilles] drew twelve youths alive out of the water, to sacrifice in revenge for Patroklos son of Menoitios. He drew them out like dazed fawns, bound their hands behind them with the belts of their own shirts, and gave them over to his men to take back to the ships.

Troy and the Etruscans

The Etruscans, who populated much of what is still known as Tuscany in Italy, formed as a civilisation from about 800 BCE, roughly the same time as the classical Greek civilisation was forming, and around five hundred years after the supposed fall of Troy. At this time, Rome consisted of small settlements, and the city of Rome was traditionally supposed to have been founded in 753 BCE, becoming a mighty Republic in about 509 BCE.

The origin of the Etruscans remains controversial. Among several proposals, it has been suggested that they may have viewed themselves as descendents of the survivors of Troy, and there has been some genetic evidence to support that (and some to contradict it, too). There is no doubt that, at the time that this tomb was constructed, these Etruscans were greatly influenced by the Greek civilisation, and had earlier been resisting the rise of Rome.

However, the popular idea that the Romans obliterated the Etruscans in another wave of genocide is incorrect: from two centuries before this tomb was built, the Etruscans had been steadily integrating with the Romans, and were assimilated (often in positions of power and influence) rather than exterminated.

Explaining the paintings

There are two halves or faces to this tomb: the Etruscan, celebrating heroes who fought against allies of Rome, and the Greek/Trojan, recording the Greek sacrifice of Trojan captives. The story behind the paintings as a whole thus depends on whether the Etruscans thought themselves to be Trojan, or Greek.

If they thought themselves to be Trojan, one explanation is that the paintings told the story of their survival against the odds, the few who escaped the genocide, and the heroes who resisted against Rome.

If they thought themselves to be Greek (or Greek sympathisers), they could be paying respect to the Greek warriors who ensured the destruction of Troy, just as their own local heroes had stood up and fought against Roman allies.

It all depends on where the Etruscans of that time thought that they had come from. Moreover, we do not know who these paintings were made for, but they were certainly never intended to be seen by the likes of you and I.

Vanth, Charun, and Angels of Death

You may also be surprised to see a winged angel of death in the paintings. Vanth, that goddess of death, is one of the more common figures shown in Etruscan tombs. My next article will look at how she came to be there, and how – seven hundred years later – Christian angels spread their wings.

References

Wikipedia on the Trojan War.
Wikipedia on the Etruscan Civilisation.

Bryce T (2006) The Trojans and their Neigbours, Routledge. ISBN 978 0 415 34955 0.
Lowenstam S (2008) As Witnessed by Images. The Trojan War Tradition in Greek and Etruscan Art, Johns Hopkins UP. ISBN 978 0 8018 8775 8.
Haynes S (2000) Etruscan Civilization. A Cultural History, J Paul Getty Museum. ISBN 978 0 892 36600 2.
Holliday PJ (1993) Narrative Structures in the François Tomb, pp 175-197 in Narrative and Event in Ancient Art, ed Holliday PJ, Cambridge UP. ISBN 978 0 521 43013 5.
Rouveret A (2015) Etruscan and Italic Tomb Painting c 400-200 BC, pp 238-287 in The Cambridge History of Painting in the Classical World, ed Pollitt JJ, Cambridge UP. ISBN 978 0 521 86591 3.

I identified two of the figures in the striking and gruesome painting on the wall of an Etruscan tomb at Vulci as being Etruscan gods: Vanth and Charun. Unless you are already familiar with Etruscan myths, these should have come as a surprise, particularly because of Vanth’s resemblance to the winged Christian angels which were to start appearing around seven hundred years later.

Vanth and Charun have been identified as the deities associated with death. They are often seen as a couple, accompanying those who have just died, or are about to die. They certainly had their work cut out as Achilles carved his way through the necks of Trojan captives.

The Farewell of Admetus and Alcestis (c 325 BCE) is an Etruscan vase painting of the Greek myth of Admetos, the King of Pherae, and his wife Alcestis, described in several sources, including Euripides’ play Alcestis. When Admetos’ fated day of death came, Apollo intervened to help him – according to Aeschylus, by making the Fates drunk, so that they agreed to reprieve him from death if he could find a substitute. His wife Alcestis substituted for him.

In this painting, Alcestis is shown making her farewells to her husband, as two versions of Charun (Etruscan, not Greek!) await their victim. Charun on the left wields his trademark hammer, while Charun on the right holds his characteristic snakes, but seems to have borrowed Vanth’s wings.

In Euripides’ version, as Alcestis is being taken to the underworld, Admetos decides that he does not wish to live. Heracles intervenes and Alcestis’ life is saved. Being a Greek, Euripides has Alcestis being taken down by Thanatos, the Greek (and male) version of the Etruscan Vanth, complete with wings.

This wall painting from the Tomb of the Charuns (or Demons) shows a typical appearance of Vanth (left) and Charun (right), either side of a door in an Etruscan tomb, although here the door itself is painted rather than an opening. It is also interesting to note that Vanth appears to have a halo above her head, although given the condition of this painting it is far from certain (and unusual too).

Charun

Going back to the original scene of Achilles killing Trojans, the version of Charun shown there is fairly typical, but not stereotypical, in that he does not have snakes with him there. His distinctive hammer or mallet is used to open the bolt on doors, particularly that to the underworld, it would appear.

This painted krater was also found in the François Tomb, and shows Charun alone, without a partner Vanth.

Vanth

Of the two deities shown in the painting of Achilles killing Trojans, it is Vanth who merits the rest of this article, which promises to explain why angels have wings.

Vanth is by no means the only Etruscan deity to come with wings attached, although she is probably the most consistently winged. In this wall painting of Typhon, from much later, around 150 BCE when the Etruscans had been assimilated into the Roman Empire, the Greek monster Typhon has acquired wings in his Etruscan form.

Ancestry

Winged female deities go back much further than even the Greeks, with the likes of the Mesopotamian Ishtar, shown here incised into the terracotta of the Ishtar Vase which may date to as early as 2000 BCE.

More detailed and sophisticated, the famous Burney Relief shows Ishtar too, and has been more confidently dated to Old Babylonian times, around 1800 BCE.

If you know your Greek deities, you will also recall that the goddess of victory, Nike, and the gods Eros (love and life) and Thanatos (death, similar to Vanth) were usually shown as human bodies with angelic wings. So it would seem an easy step to suggest that the early Christians simply borrowed this ‘pagan’ symbolism when they developed the first depictions of Christian angels.

But it is not so simple.

Angels

Nowhere in the Old or New Testaments (nor in any of the apocryphal writings, I think) are the angels of the Israelites or of Christians described as being winged. Cherubim (‘cherubs’) and seraphim were, but not angels. The few depictions of angels in the Christian tradition to around 390 CE omitted wings too (I have been unable to locate a suitable image to illustrate this, I am afraid). Then, between about 390 and 400, they suddenly acquired wings, and by 600 CE wings were universal and mandatory.

This breathtaking mosaic in the vault of the chapel of San Zeno, in Santa Prassede, Rome, from 817-824 CE, shows them very clearly, as does every painting of the Annunciation.

The few Moslem miniatures which show angels followed suit. This painting of The Archangel Israfil by Zakariya al-Qazwini from 1280 is even more cross-faith, as a Moslem depiction of an Old Testament (Israelite Jewish) angel following this Christian tradition.

The wings of angels were often key elements in paintings, as in the sublime Wilton Diptych (c 1395-9), where they impose a clear rhythm.

Another highly original and beautiful depiction of winged angels is in Hieronymus Bosch’s panel Ascent of the Blessed, one of the four panels making up his Visions of the Hereafter (c 1505-15).

These wings enable clear distinction between humans, and other human-like creatures, and the messengers of God. Being messengers, just as Eros, Thanatos, and Vanth before them, there is a feasible rationale for them requiring their wings in order to move swiftly from heaven (or the pre-Christian underworld) to earth, and in their duties on earth.

There is also a deeper and perhaps archetypal role in the ‘angel of death’ – Greek (Thanatos), Etruscan (Vanth), and Christian.

Depictions such as Horace Vernet’s The Angel of Death (1851) and Marianne Stokes’ Death and the Maiden (1908) were only too familiar to many Christian families across Europe during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, just as they must have been to the Etruscans, Greeks, and Trojans long before.

References

Wikipedia on angels.
Wikipedia listing of Etruscan deities.

de Grummond NT (2006) Etruscan Myth, Sacred History, and Legend, University of Pennsylvania Museum. ISBN 978 1 931707 86 3.
Haynes S (2000) Etruscan Civilization. A Cultural History, J Paul Getty Museum. ISBN 978 0 892 36600 2.
Holliday PJ (1993) Narrative Structures in the François Tomb, pp 175-197 in Narrative and Event in Ancient Art, ed Holliday PJ, Cambridge UP. ISBN 978 0 521 43013 5.
Lowenstam S (2008) As Witnessed by Images. The Trojan War Tradition in Greek and Etruscan Art, Johns Hopkins UP. ISBN 978 0 8018 8775 8.
Rouveret A (2015) Etruscan and Italic Tomb Painting c 400-200 BC, pp 238-287 in The Cambridge History of Painting in the Classical World, ed Pollitt JJ, Cambridge UP. ISBN 978 0 521 86591 3.

Reading a painting, and working out its narrative, is not a science, and even experts can sometimes get it wrong. This article follows up my comments about Velázquez’s popular painting known as Las Hilanderas (The Spinners) originally made here, where I expressed doubt as to its currently accepted reading.

The painting in question is Velázquez’s The Spinners (Las Hilanderas, The Fable of Arachne) (c 1657).

Painted originally for Don Pedro de Arce, huntsman to King Philip IV, it became part of the Royal Collection, where it is believed to have been damaged by fire in 1734. When it was repaired, new sections were added to the left, right, and upper edges. Until 1928, it was believed to depict the tapestry workshop of Santa Isabel, with spinners working in the foreground, and tapestries hanging in the background.

Then in 1928, Diego Angula proposed that it depicted the legend of Arachne, as told in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, book 6, lines 1-145.

The story of Arachne

Arachne, in Roman legend, was described in three different accounts, of which Ovid’s, in his Metamorphoses, is probably the most popular and appropriate here: we know, for example, that Velázquez had three different versions of this retold in Spanish, although any differences between those versions and Ovid’s original are not clear. Unusually, this myth was Roman in origin, and there is no trace of it in the surviving Greek literature, nor has it been found in Greek vase paintings.

Arachne was the daughter of a humble family, whose mother had died, but her father had started as a shepherd and become a dyer of wool in purple. Arachne became the greatest weaver in the world, and boasted that her skill was greater than that of the goddess (Pallas) Athena. The latter set up a contest between them, posing as an old woman who then challenged Arachne before revealing herself.

Unfortunately for Arachne, she not only produced work more beautiful than Athena’s, but it showed the many lapses of the gods and their unfairness to mankind. Athena was enraged by this, ripped Arachne’s work to shreds, and sprinkled her with Hecate’s potion, which turned her into a spider. She and her kin were thus condemned to weave for all time.

This has been depicted slightly earlier in Rubens’ Pallas and Arachne (1636-7), which clearly shows the weaving contest, with Pallas Athena striking Arachne with her boxwood shuttle in front of the looms, and a clear visual reference to the Rape of Europa in the tapestry in the right background.

Proposed readings

Reading this painting has been complicated by the fact that it was probably damaged by fire in 1734, as a result of which it was significantly enlarged, presumably as part of its repair.

One current reading of this painting – given by Kilinski (2013) and many others – is that the foreground section shows the weaving contest between Athena, as an old woman on the left, and Arachne, as a young woman on the right. The background area then displays their completed tapestries, of which Arachne’s is visible, and shows a copy of Titian’s The Rape of Europa, a Greek myth which is identified as the first offensive scene woven by Arachne in the contest.

The snag with that reading is that it does not fit what the painting actually shows: the older woman at the left is not weaving but spinning, using a spinning wheel which would also have been an anachronism at the time of Arachne’s contest. Ovid’s account is also clear in stating that, before the contest started, Athena revealed herself in her full glory, and did not retain the appearance of an old woman. Furthermore, the woman on the right is not weaving either, but is winding spun yarn into skeins. Neither is there any evidence in the foreground of the presence of any dyed yarn which might be suitable for weaving.

Barolsky (2014) recognises that the women in the foreground are not weaving, but still maintains that the tapestry of The Rape of Europa in the background “conjures up the story of the competition between Arachne and Minerva”. He too considers the woman at the spinning wheel must be Athena/Minerva, as well as the woman in the background wearing a helmet, which makes the painting have continuous narrative (a composite of two temporally distinct scenes). That would, of course, be unique in Velázquez’s works, and very unusual for a painting of this time.

But the most remarkable reading is that of Wendy Bird (2007), who accepts that the foreground figures have nothing to do with weaving, but are “engaged in carding, spinning and winding yarn”. She then proceeds to claim that the painting contains earthy erotic imagery referring to lust and prostitution.

The foreground figures

Although the painting contains an inset background containing itself another image, of the hanging tapestry, it is best to start with the dominating foreground, which occupies most of the canvas, and is most detailed.

The five women shown in the foreground, going from left to right, are:

1. a young woman, bending down from a position against a pile of fabrics and materials;
2. an older, but by no means old, woman holding a distaff and operating a spinning wheel to spin wool. She is dressed very modestly, with her hair covered, but her left leg is bare from the knee down to her bare foot;
3. a woman sat low, carding wool. Her face is dark and lacks features;
4. a younger woman with her back to the viewer, who is winding wool with her left hand, and holds a ball of undyed wool in her right. She appears to have removed some of the clothing from her upper body, which is clad in (very modest) undergarments;
5. at the right edge, a girl who appears to be observing or assisting the fourth woman, and rests on a wicker basket.

There is also a cat, at the second woman’s feet, and fleeces hanging at the top right.

Taken together, this group of women are engaged in the carding, spinning, and winding of undyed wool, which would have ended up in skeins (not balls) for washing and dyeing. None of their activities is directly related to weaving, except insofar as the wool, after dyeing, may then go on for weaving. Neither are there any references to the story of Arachne – such as a spider, spider’s web, etc. – in the foreground. The common mythological reference for spinning, to the Fates, is also unsupported: there are five women, not three, none appears to have shears or scissors, and so on.

The second woman, although apparently older than the others, does not meet Ovid’s description of having “long grey hair, and with a staff to steady her weak limbs. She seemed a feeble woman, very old, and quavered as she” spoke.

The background

Although highlighted, the background is relatively small, and lacking in detail. However the figures seen there, from left to right, are:

1. a well-dressed woman facing away from the viewer, her right hand resting near a viola da gamba (the size of a modern cello);
2. a person (of indeterminate gender) wearing a helmet and upper body armour, facing away from the viewer, and probably holding a spear in her right hand, although this is marked only by a vertical white line;
3. a woman whose right forearm is outstretched, engaged apparently with the second woman, and facing towards her;
4. a well-dressed woman, standing with her back to the viewer, apparently looking towards the fifth woman;
5. another well-dressed woman, seen side-on but looking directly at the viewer.

None of these people are engaged in any form of weaving or wool-working, and the musical instrument is not being played.

Behind them, and close by the third woman, is an ornately-edged tapestry showing the same image as Titian’s painting The Rape of Europa (1560-2), or its near-identical copy by Rubens in 1628-9, which was probably in Madrid at the time that Velázquez painted this work, in about 1657.

These paintings are so similar that it is immaterial as to which Velázquez may have used as the basis for this painting.

The second person may be intended to represent Pallas Athena, as her helmet and armour are possibly characteristic. I write “possibly”, because the strongest tradition shows her helmet with exuberant decoration along its midline, as shown in Crane’s illustration.

There are no other references to the story of Arachne – such as a spider, spider’s web, etc. – nor to the Fates. The figures shown are not in any form of altercation, nor is the second person wielding a boxwood shuttle, tearing down or up any tapestry, or showing any of the behaviours described by Ovid.

Putting it together

Velázquez was not a prolific painter of classical myths, but he has a well-deserved reputation for constructing complex paintings which can be read at several different levels, and are quite intensely cerebral – his most famous Las Meninas (1656) is a good example which continues to generate much speculation.

Attempts to suggest a simple reading, in terms of wool-working or Ovid’s story, simply do not correspond with what is actually shown in the painting. Instead we need to look at each of the references made by Velázquez, their meanings, and how they might assemble into a coherent whole. Although this approach was mentioned by Wendy Bird (2007), she considered that the “interpretations of the fable of Arachne” “seem unrelated to” the painting.

Arachne’s crimes, in the eyes of Pallas Athena, were to criticise the gods in her art, and to be conceited enough (perhaps justly) to claim that she was better than the gods in her art. The image of the rape of Europa is particularly appropriate to the former reason, and particularly relevant to any artist late in their career, when they are looking back at what they created, and passing on advice to future generations.

I do not believe that Velázquez uses the spinning workshop in the foreground as a reference to Arachne (although Ovid did briefly mention Arachne’s spinning in his laudatory introduction to her weaving skills), nor to time (the Fates are not being cited), nor to sexual promiscuity (which appears out of kilter with the whole painting).

Rather the spinners – the title of the painting – represent the craft foundation for the tapestry art, both in material terms, and in providing the content through which the art is expressed. This is almost a meta-narrative in defence of narrative painting, and the fundamental craft basis for the art.

It was Velázquez looking back at his career, and passing on its lessons to artists of the future.

References

Wikipedia on this painting.

An English translation of the story of Arachne, quoted from above, is in Tufts’ superb Perseus digital library. The translation is taken from: Ovid, Metamorphoses, by Brookes More. Boston. Cornhill Publishing Co. 1922.

Barolsky P (2014) Ovid and the Metamorphoses of Modern Art from Botticelli to Picasso, Yale UP. Pages 147-8. ISBN 978 0 300 19669 6.
Bird W (2007) The bobbin & the distaff: erotic imagery and the meaning of Velazquez’s ‘Las Hilanderas’, Apollo Magazine.
Kilinski K II (2013) Greek Myth and Western Art, The Presence of the Past, Cambridge UP. Page 138. ISBN 978 1 107 01332 2.

Over this series of articles, I have shown examples of different modes of visual narrative: most commonly that in which the painting shows a moment in time, usually termed monoscenic, with some instances in which a single painting shows two or more moments in time within the same frame, something often referred to as continuous narrative. This article considers how best to classify these and other modes, and proposes a terminology which will I hope make future discussion easier and clearer.

Andrews (1995) has reviewed some of the terms used by different authors, which has been made the more complex by the fact that most have developed their classification in a limited context, for example considering only classical Greek and Roman art. He makes the broad distinction between monoscenic and continuous modes, lumping all those which show more than a single moment into the latter category. Unfortunately this quickly becomes less clear when he considers examples, and starts describing paintings as having “continuous scenes”.

Kilinski (2013) more ambitiously divides the modes into:

• monoscenic, a single, often dramatic or culminating moment fills the image;
• expanded monoscenic, in which there are also elements that allude to other actions or actors beyond that visually present;
• synoptic or simultaneous, in which more than one moment and/or locale is represented in a single scene;
• cyclic, in which the narrative is divided into separate scenes without repeating characters in any single frame;
• sequential cyclic, in which there is a clear progression through the cycle;
• continuous, in which figures are repeated in a common background in which time changes with the reappearance of the figure(s) but not necessarily the locale; most commonly seen in very wide formats such as scrolls.

The current Wikipedia article on narrative art also uses the terms:

• simultaneous, in which discernible organisation is only apparent to those acquainted with its purpose, with geometric or abstract designs;
• panoptic, which equates to Kilinski’s cyclic mode;
• progressive, showing a single scene in which characters do not repeat, but in which a sequence of actions take place to convey the passage of time;
• sequential, a continuous narrative in which framing shows the progress of time, as in comics and manga;

There are no doubt several other classifications, and further terms, which have been used elsewhere.

Few of these texts have considered the first and most important issue of what defines visual narrative, which surely determines the root of any classification. I discussed that in my article So what is a narrative painting? which stressed the importance of the image referring in some way to two or more events. Thus a simple depiction of a moment is most unlikely to be sufficient to qualify as narrative, even if the viewer might associate that image with a known story. The clearest visual narratives contain references to, or depictions of, more than one instant in the story.

The next obvious and logical division depends on whether the graphical content of the image is of a single moment in time, or two or more moments. If from a single moment, then the term monoscenic might have been appropriate but for its connotations in the theatre and movies, where a scene can last for a considerable period of time, allowing actors to move from one side of the stage to the other, victims to die, and much more besides. The term instantaneous appears much more appropriate to what we are looking for in a painting, photograph, or other image.

Andrews’ use of the blanket term continuous to cover all non-instantaneous modes is of limited value, as it does not actually describe how the image differs from the instantaneous, and the narrative is not depicted in any continuous form. I prefer the more descriptive multiplex, or for images which are clearly divided into a group of frames, each containing the instantaneous, multi-frame.

There is another mode which needs to be separated here too: when a series of instantaneous images is used to tell the story, which would logically be described as multi-image.

Another important question which most texts omit is how to handle images containing discrete areas which contain other images, such as paintings or other pictorial devices such as a flashback or flash-forward (analepsis or prolepsis, respectively). These are rhetorical devices which do not themselves alter the mode of narrative, nor are they usually a distinct frame in the way that multi-frame images are.

For the moment I propose that they should not affect the basic classification of the mode of narrative, but can qualify an image as being narrative, and can be usefully appended to the mode, e.g. ‘instantaneous narrative with an embedded analeptic painting’. Embedded images can also add another story to the main story, making the whole image polymythic.

This provides the following classification:

• narrative, in which a story is depicted, almost invariably containing reference to, or depictions of, more than one instant in the story;
• instantaneous, in which the image is intended to show what was happening at a single moment in time, even though it is likely to contain references to other moments in time;
• multi-image, in which a series of separate images (e.g. paintings) is used to tell the story;
• multiplex, in which a single image contains representations of two or more moments in time from a story;
• multi-frame, in which two or more picture frames are used to tell a story, most commonly in comics or manga;
• polymythic, which is a single image containing two or more stories.

It is simple to embed this into a flowchart enabling the classification of paintings, photos, and other images. Here is an interactive version as a Zipped Storyspace document: narrativeclass1
for which you will need a copy of that app from Eastgate Systems.

Examples

Poussin’s Rinaldo and Armida (c 1630) shows a single instant, but has multiple references to events before and after that moment, so it has instantaneous narrative.

Gérôme’s Cleopatra before Caesar (1866) also depicts a single instant, but again has references to prior events, particularly the screwed up carpet, which was used by Cleopatra to gain entry. Her dreamy look towards Caesar also anticipates her affair with him. It therefore has instantaneous narrative.

Sometimes paintings with instantaneous narrative can make quite small and subtle references to other events in the story, and confirm their narrative nature. In Burne-Jones’s Cinderella (1863) the only such reference is the missing slipper on Cinderella’s right foot. This has instantaneous narrative.

Although Detaille’s Le Rêve (The Dream) (1888) contains two images, these are not in fact linked by normal narrative, but the dream image shown in the clouds could be considered as a form of analepsis, or flashback. Thus the painting has instantaneous narrative.

Gallen-Kallela’s triptych showing the Aino Myth (1891) contains three separate images which tell one of the stories from the Kalevala myths. It is therefore multi-image narrative, within which each image is itself conventional instantaneous narrative.

Immediately on looking at this Roman painting of Perseus and Andromeda, you can see the duplicated images of Perseus: one flying in from the left, the other being congratulated at the right. If intended to be a literal telling of the story, Cetus the sea monster would not appear until after Perseus had freed Andromeda from her chains. It therefore contains at least two different moments in time, but is not divided into frames. It is therefore multiplex narrative.

One and a half millenia later, in Piero di Cosimo’s Andromeda freed by Perseus (c 1510-15), Perseus appears three times: flying down from the top, stood on Cetus about to kill the monster, and in the subsequent party at the bottom right. Andromeda also appears at least twice. These separate events are mixed together in its multiplex narrative.

Moving more than a millenium forward, Lovis Corinth’s Ariadne on Naxos (1913) also combines two separate events into a single image: the abandonment of Ariadne by Theseus, and the arrival of Dionysus/Bacchus to be her future husband. He does this without any duplication of actors, though, and it remains multiplex narrative.

Masaccio’s fresco in the Brancacci Chapel of The Tribute Money (1425-8) contains three images of Saint Peter, and two of the tax gatherer, which are carefully set and projected into the same single view. Although each is spaced apart from the next, no pictorial device is used to separate them into frames. This too is multiplex narrative.

The five different sets of Adam and Eve shown in Lucas Cranach the Elder’s The Garden of Eden (1530) are set within the representation of the garden as a whole, making this multiplex narrative.

This detail of Krishna Storms the Citadel of Narakasura (c 1840) contains two near-identical representations of Krishna, which make it multiplex narrative.

My final example of multiplex narrative is that of the Heiji Monogatari Emaki (Sanjo Scroll) (late 1200s), in which time advances from right to left, and there is duplication of actors.

Although linked, and often told together, the stories of Echo and of Narcissus can be separated, and it is therefore possible to classify JW Waterhouse’s Echo and Narcissus (1903) as being very unusual, and showing polymythic narrative.

A few paintings appear even more complex: Velázquez’s Las Hilanderas (The Spinners) may contain one narrative in the foreground, a second in the background, and a third in the painting of The Rape of Europa shown in the far background. This would make it polymythic narrative at the very least.

I hope that those examples illustrate the practical application of the terminology proposed above.

References

Wikipedia.

Andrews L (1995) Story and Space in Renaissance Art, the Rebirth of Continuous Narrative, Cambridge UP. ISBN 0 521 47356 X.
Kilinski K II (2013) Greek Myth and Western Art, The Presence of the Past, Cambridge UP. ISBN 978 1 107 01332 2.

Contemporary romantic poems and the legends of the mythical King Arthur of Britain of around 500 CE were central themes in much of Pre-Raphaelite art. Although never a member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood itself, Arthur Hughes (1832–1915) ‘converted’ to its ideals and style in 1850. He had studied at the School of Design in London from 1846, and progressed to the Royal Academy Schools the following year.

Over the period from 1850 to 1875, he painted several of the popular Arthurian legends, and related stories. From 1855 onwards, he started illustrating books, and his drawings achieved fame alongside the texts of Tennyson’s Enoch Arden, Thomas Hughes’ Tom Brown’s School Days, and Christina Rossetti’s poetry.

His son, Arthur Ford Hughes (1856-1914) was a less well-known painter, and he was the uncle of Edward Robert Hughes (1851-1914).

Ophelia

Of his leading female roles, Shakespeare’s Ophelia (Hamlet) and Juliet (Romeo and Juliet) have been the most popular with artists. Hughes’ first painting of Ophelia (c 1851-3) was started soon after his initial success in exhibiting his Musidora (1849) at the Royal Academy, and was one of his first Pre-Raphaelite works.

It shows Ophelia sat under a willow tree, by the stream in which she is shortly to drown herself, having been driven to madness by Hamlet’s murder of her father, and his rejection of her love. To ensure that the viewer is in no doubt as to the moment which he shows us, Hughes inscribed the relevant lines from Hamlet Act 4 Scene 7 around his painting.

Although it meets the criteria for a narrative painting, with its forward reference in the stream, it conveys no sense of the imminent tragic outcome, relying on the viewer’s own knowledge of the original play. It was John Millais who painted the story’s resolution at almost exactly the same time, in his Ophelia (1851-2), showing Ophelia’s drowned body in the water.

Another interesting comparison, outside Pre-Raphaelite circles this time, is with Jules Bastien-Lepage’s unfinished Ophelia (1881), in which her face expresses strong emotion, and her toppling into the water seems imminent.

A decade later, Hughes returned to this story, in his Ophelia (“And will he not come again?”) (c 1863-71). This time he refers to an earlier moment in the play, in Act 4 Scene 5, just after Hamlet’s murder of Polonius, when Ophelia, already “distracted”, sings:
And will he not come again?
And will he not come again?
No, no, he is dead;
Go to thy deathbed;
He never will come again.
His beard was as white as snow,
All flaxen was his poll.
He is gone, he is gone,
And we cast away moan.
God ‘a’mercy on his soul!
And of all Christian souls, I pray God. God b’ wi’ you.

Despite that reference to a scene which takes place inside the castle, Hughes has painted Ophelia some minutes before her drowning, when she is picking wild flowers and standing in front of an old willow tree which overhangs a much more substantial body of water. The latter is almost black in the deep shade, and is revealed as water only by the presence of a few bright reflected objects on its surface. Rather than picturing a moment closer to the tragic climax of this story, Hughes has moved slightly away from it, and its reading is just as reliant on knowledge of the original play.

The Eve of St Agnes (1856)

While Hughes was studying at the Royal Academy Schools, Holman Hunt painted his The flight of Madeline and Porphyro during the drunkenness attending the revelry (The Eve of St. Agnes) (1848). This is based on John Keats’ poem The Eve of St. Agnes (1819).

Madeline has fallen in love with Porphyro, who is an enemy to her family. Older women have told Madeline that she can receive sweet dreams of love on the night of St. Agnes Eve, which precedes the day on which the patron saint of virgins is celebrated (21 January). On that night, Porphyro gains entry to the castle in which Madeline lives, and looks for Angela, who remains a friend to his family despite the feud.

Angela reluctantly agrees to take him to Madeline’s room, so that he can gaze at her sleeping there. Once there, he hides in a large wardrobe, and watches her prepare for bed, seeing her full beauty in the moonlight. He then creeps out to prepare a meal for her, but she wakes partially, and seeing the same figure which she had just been dreaming, takes him into her bed. She then wakes fully and realises her mistake. They declare their mutual love before escaping from the castle past drunken revelers, and flee into the night.

Rather than Holman Hunt’s elaborate and ingenious composition, Hughes opts for a triptych, read from left to right. At the left, Porphyro is approaching the castle. In the centre, he has woken Madeline, who has not yet taken him into her bed. At the right, he almost quotes from Holman Hunt’s version, showing the couple’s escape over drunken revellers. There is also a second, undated version in the Ashmolean, Oxford, in which the painting at the left shows a slightly later moment, where Porphyro meets Angela at the entrance to the castle.

Once again, Hughes felt the need to provide the viewer with an excerpt of the original text:
They told her how, upon St Agnes’ Eve,
Young virgins might have visions of delight,
And soft adorings from their loves receive
Upon the honey’d middle of the night.
If ceremonies due they did aright,
And supperless to bed they must retire,
And couch supine their beauties lily white,
Nor look behind, nor sideways, but require
Of heaven with upward eyes for all that they desire.

This painting was very well received when shown at the Royal Academy in 1856, with the critic John Ruskin, and painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti being enthused by it.

Aurora Leigh’s Dismissal of Romney (‘The Tryst’) (1860)

Miss Ellen Heaton, one of Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s patrons and a friend of writer Elizabeth Barret Browning, commissioned Hughes to paint a scene from Browning’s poem Aurora Leigh (1856). That tells the story of Aurora, an orphan who was brought up by her aunt and aspires to be a poet. On the morning of her twentieth birthday, her cousin Romney Leigh proposes marriage to her, which she rejects in favour of her chosen path as a poet. Romney disparages her writing and wishes her to devote her time to his philanthropic work. But Aurora says:
Is not a woman, Romney, but a cause:
You want a helpmate, not a mistress, sir.
A wife to help your ends,
in her no end!

Hughes’ painting shows Romney at the left, a decidedly androgynous figure, just after his rejection, about to take his leave of Aurora. She stands clutching a book of her poetry, which he has just been making fun of. Both stare wistfully into the distance, but neither at the other. Romney’s hat was reworked twice; as its paint has become less opaque over time, traces of the earlier forms can be seen.

Its narrative effect is curious. It does contain the backward reference of the book of poetry, but the moment chosen is sufficiently after the climax of the story to make the painting look static and only weakly narrative. Miss Heaton had wanted Hughes to show the quarrel leading to the rejection; the critic John Ruskin was brought in to mediate, and sided with Hughes. The painting was not shown to the public in Hughes’ lifetime, and it was only in 1964 that Rosalie Mander rediscovered it and established its obscure story.

Sir Galahad, the Quest for the Holy Grail (1870)

The Holy Grail, a central theme in many tales of Arthurian legend, was a vessel with magical powers which range from providing happiness to eternal youth and food. It was originally supposed to have fallen from the sky, but in the twelfth century became entangled with the legend of the Holy Chalice, the vessel used to serve wine at Christ’s Last Supper, and further enhanced when later writers claimed that it had also been used to catch Christ’s blood when he had been taken down from the cross.

Hughes’ painting of one of the more prominent knights of the Round Table of Camelot in quest of the grail is dominated by the neutral and protective ‘grail angels’, who cast their golden light over the night scene. This was probably based on Tennyson’s poem The Holy Grail published in 1869 as part of his collection of Arthurian legends retold in The Holy Grail and Other Poems. This may represent the moment when, having left Sir Percivale behind, Galahad is taken up to a heavenly city in a boat like a silver star.

The Lady of Shalott (c 1872-3)

Many of the Pre-Raphaelites painted The Lady of Shalott, taken from Tennyson’s Arthurian ballad of that name, published in two versions, in 1833 and 1842. It was elaborated from the story of Elaine of Astolat, as retold in the obscure thirteenth-century Italian novella Donna di Scalotta.

This Lady lives in a castle connected to Camelot by a river. She is subject to a mysterious curse which confines her to weaving images on her loom, and must not look directly at the outside world (she can use a mirror, though, to view it). One day, while she sits and weaves, she catches sight of the knight Lancelot. His appearance is such that she stops weaving and looks out of her window directly towards Camelot, invoking the curse. She then abandons her castle, and finds a boat on which she writes her name. She floats in that boat downriver to Camelot, dying before she arrives there. Lancelot sees her body, and the poem ends:
But Lancelot mused a little space
He said, “She has a lovely face;
God in his mercy lend her grace,
The Lady of Shalott.”

Walter Crane’s painting of 1862 shows the classical end-point, of the Lady dead in her boat in a wood near the castle.

Hughes chose the same moment, which is after the climax of the story, but brings in not Sir Lancelot to voice his short eulogy, but a nun and four peasant women instead.

Later still, JW Waterhouse (1888) preferred to show the Lady, already suffering the consequences of the curse, as she sets out to drift downstream.

Conclusions

Arthur Hughes’ narrative paintings may meet the definition of narrative, in having forward or backward references, but are generally static tableaux. Where there is the potential for action, as in his Sir Galahad, the Quest for the Holy Grail (1870), that is exploited little. This is in keeping with the Pre-Raphaelite approach to narrative.

His earlier narrative paintings, in particular, were reliant on inclusion of text quotations on the canvas, and most needed the viewer to be very familiar with the written source of the story. Although effective, this limited their accessibiity and appeal.

References

Wikipedia

Poulson C (1999) The Quest for the Grail, Arthurian Legend in British Art 1840-1920, Manchester UP. ISBN 978 0 7190 5537 9.

The arts have a tendency to become reflexive, expressing themselves about their art. Writers quite often write about writers, and many movies are about movies and their making (some of the best, too). Painting is almost an exception to this – at least until it turned inward in the twentieth century – with relatively few paintings about painting, other than portraits of other painters, of course.

A notable exception is Apelles of Kos, one of the most renowned of the great painters of ancient Greece. Claimed to have been active around 330 BCE, he has been attributed at least eight major works. Among these are Aphrodite Anadyomene, in which the goddess Aphrodite rises from the sea. This achieved fame in part because his model for Aphrodite was a former mistress of Alexander the Great, Campaspe (according to the writings of Pliny the Elder).

Another was a great allegory of Calumny, of which more is below. He also painted several myths and legends, and portraits of both Alexander the Great and his father Philip.

The snag with Apelles’ paintings is that none survives.

Although several were taken to Rome, and it is claimed that at least one survived as a copy in the ruins of Pompeii (above), all that remains of Apelles’ works are the textual descriptions in classical writings. Nevertheless, on the strength of that very limited evidence, it has long been accepted that Apelles was a great Master, and there are many paintings which either depict Apelles at work, usually painting Campaspe, or which revisit the allegory of Calumny.

Apelles and Campaspe

The story of Apelles and Alexander’s former mistress (or concubine) is straightforward. When Apelles was sketching or painting Campaspe, he fell in love with her. Alexander, in his generosity and as a mark of appreciation of Apelles’ work, presented Campaspe to Apelles. She is claimed to have been the model for his famous painting of Aphrodite, which was in turn inspiration to Botticelli for his Birth of Venus.

Willem van Haecht’s extraordinary Apelles painting Campaspe (c 1630) tucks the story down in its lower left, where Apelles is shown painting a rather bored Campaspe while Alexander (wearing distinctive armour) looks on. That is then set in a painted account of the history of painting since, with miniature versions of nearly forty paintings in that room alone, and more in further rooms beyond. Although an enormous anachronism, it develops the core narrative into something much more worthy of painting.

A member of the circle of Antonio Balestra painted an even simpler story, in their Alexander the Great in the Painter Apelles’ Studio (c 1700), by omitting Campaspe altogether. Although their faces show emotion in their expressions, and there is good body language, it is hard to compose those into anything more than their astonishment at how good (mimetic) Apelles’ painting is.

Nicolas Vleughels’ Apelles Painting Campaspe (1716) is perhaps a little closer to any underlying truth in the story. A servant leans down to adjust a cushion on which Campaspe’s right foot rests. Apelles concentrates on the painting in progress, while Alexander and one of his colleagues watch, whispering to one another. However Vleughels has interesting ideas as to how Apelles would dress when working in his studio.

Tiepolo’s Alexander the Great and Campaspe in the Studio of Apelles (c 1740) perhaps reflects his own troubles with ennui among his models, with Campaspe, her maid, and Alexander looking thoroughly unimpressed with the artist’s slow progress, working at an unusual and highly anachronistic tondo (round canvas).

Charles Meynier, in his Alexander the Great Gives Campaspe to Apelles (1822), is one of the few painters to have taken the story to its conclusion, as Alexander gives Campaspe to a supplicant Apelles, his right hand clutching his breast to express his love for her, and his brushes scattered in symbolic disarray on the carpet.

The Calumny of Apelles

Rivalry between painters in Apelles’ day could become intense, and at times underhand methods were called into play. One of Apelles’ rivals accused him of taking part in a conspiracy against Ptolemy, one of Alexander’s generals. This almost led to Apelles’ execution, but the artist instead expressed himself in his painting of Calumny, in which an innocent youth is falsely accused by Ignorance, Envy, Treachery, and Deceit.

Inspired by Lucian’s description of the painting, in his ekphrasis, Botticelli’s intricate Calumny of Apelles (c 1496-7) tries to reconstruct the allegory.

The youth who is the victim of the calumny is being dragged by his hair, clad only in a loincloth, with his hands pressed in prayer. On the throne at the right, perched on a dais, sits Midas, with ass’s ears, extending his right hand towards the distant figure of Slander. On either side of Midas are Ignorance and Suspicion, speaking simultaneously in those ears.

Slander is shown as a beautiful woman, holding a blazing torch in her left hand, and the accused’s hair in her right. At her left, between Slander and Midas, is Envy, who reaches his left hand out towards Midas’ eyes. The two women attending Slander are Fraud and Conspiracy. To the left is Repentance, dressed in deep mourning, her clothing in tatters. She glances back at the naked Truth, who looks up to the gods.

This is all dependent on knowing what each of the figures represents, of course; without that key, the allegory would remain obscure.

Conclusions

Among the few paintings about paintings, even fewer develop the simple story of Apelles to set it in the overall history of painting: only van Haecht seems to have painted that bigger picture.

Botticelli’s recreation of Apelles’ allegory of calumny relies on the viewer identifying the meaning of the figures, which is most unlikely from the painting alone. Although it appears faithful to Lucian’s ekphrasis, we have no idea how faithful it might have been to Apelles’ original. Apelles’ survival on reputation alone is remarkable, and perhaps the safest route to being the greatest and oldest Master of all.

References

Wikipedia on Apelles.
Wikpedia on Botticelli’s Calumny of Apelles.